Inhuman
by Leo Septem
Summary: Saito Hiraga thought that life couldn't get any more exciting when he moved to Manhattan with his parents. He never would have imagined that he would get caught up in the second outbreak of the Blacklight virus. And he never would have dreamed that he might then be summoned to another world as the familiar of another inhuman being.
1. Become - Prologue

**Prologue - Become**

"_Wow," Saito said as he looked outside of the window of the airplane. Far, far beneath them, he could see nearly the entirety of the island of Manhattan. Even from here, he could see the towering skyscrapers and the cars and people that moved along the streets and alleys like so many little ants._

"_It's impressive, isn't it?" _

_Saito forcibly pried his eyes away from the window to look at his mother, Yuriko, and father, Gennai, who were watching him with a twinkle in their eyes. _

"_Yeah," Saito nodded enthusiastically. "I can't believe this is where we're going to be living from now on."_

"_It is going to be exciting," his mother nodded. "Did you make sure to study your English?"_

"_... Sure. Yeah, of course I did," Saito said evasively, hoping his mother and father didn't catch onto his little lie. _

_Unfortunately, Saito wasn't quite that lucky. _

"_You didn't, did you?" Yuriko sighed as she put her hand to her forehead and shook her head wearily. "Fine. Just don't come crying to us if you can't make any friends because you can't speak their language."_

"_Aw, you worry too much, Mom," Saito grinned. "I'm sure everything will be fine."_

"_And you don't worry enough," Yuriko said, as she lightly bopped Saito on the head._

"_Well, anyway, let's just leave that aside for now," Saito grinned, as he rubbed the spot where his mom had hit him, more for the simple motion of doing so rather than because it actually hurt. "When do you two start work, Mom, Dad?"_

_Though the attempt at changing the topic was as obvious as the sun on a clear day, Saito was grateful that his mother went along with it._

"_In a week," Yuriko said. "Gentek treats its employees very well. They're giving us so much time to settle in properly and they are even covering the costs of our flight and taking care of arranging a home for us." She nodded in a sort of pleased gesture. "Your dad and I certainly are lucky to have been recruited by them."_

"_Generous," Gennai agreed._

"_Hm..." A sort of mischievous look spread on Saito's face. "Then that means we have lots of time to go sightseeing once we get there, right?"_

_Yuriko rolled her eyes. "Saito, we're going to be living there. Is there really a need to go sightseeing like a bunch of tourists right off the bat? You can look around at any time from now on, after all."_

"_But you two will probably be too busy to come with me once your work begins," Saito argued back. "We should at least take the chance to look around our new home as a family, right?"_

"_Our son has a point," Gennai said in his characteristic slow, deep, rhythmic voice. "There's no reason not to, Yuriko."_

"_All right, then," Yuriko conceded. She smiled. "Then how about we go take a look at the Statue of Liberty tomorrow?"_

_Saito nodded enthusiastically. "Yeah, and then we should go to the Empire State Building too! After, let's find a Japanese restaurant to eat at."_

"_We just left Japan," Yuriko pointed out. "Shouldn't you be trying out some new, American foods instead?"_

_Saito gave his mother an aggrieved expression. "Mom. Telling a Japanese person not to eat Japanese food is like telling the sun to rise from the west. It just can't be done."_

"_There are plenty of Japanese people who live overseas and primarily eat food native to that country."_

"_Mom!"_

"_All right, all right," Yuriko said exasperatedly, though she grinned with amusement at her son's fallacious reasoning. "We'll try to find one to eat at."_

"_Sushi," Gennai said, nodding satisfactorily to himself._

"_A sushi restaurant it is," Saito said cheerfully._

"_Fine," Yuriko said. "But don't forget that we have to unpack at least some of our things and settle into our new home first before any sightseeing."_

"_No problem!" Saito said. "We'll get that done really quickly so we have a lot of time to spend together as a family!"_

"It sounds like you were close with your family."

Saito nodded soberly. "They were my everything. But now they're gone."

"Infected or dead?"

"Is there a difference?"

_It all happened so fast that when it occurred, he had no idea what was going on. He had been riding the school bus back home when a strange red cloud had swept outwards from Penn Station, which they had been parked nearby, waiting for a red light. _

_Surprised and more than a little scared, all the students within the bus began whispering in hushed tones of panic. What was this? A gas attack by some terrorists, maybe? Was this to be another September 11? As the cloud approached closer and closer to their bus, the whisper quickly escalated to a loud chattering and then into outright roars of panic._

"_Settle down!" the bus driver shouted out loudly, doing his best to be the calming force in this atmosphere of confusion. "Everyone, roll up the windows! Fast!"_

_All the students hastened to obey, but despite their swift response, the red cloud was even swifter. Before all the windows had finished closing, the cloud washed over the bus like a wave and it seeped in through the still-open windows. _

_The effect was immediate._

_Saito began coughing horribly and clutched painfully at his chest. He felt as though his very lungs had been set on fire. But if he was in pain, then those around him were under bloody torture. Unleashing unholy shrieks, all of Saito's schoolmates and the bus driver collapsed where they were, convulsing and twitching in manners that no human would normally be able to move. _

"_H-Hey!" Saito coughed as he reached out to the kid beside him. "Are you a-all right?"_

_No reply; only more screams._

_Then, to Saito's horror, the boy's body began to transform right before his eyes. As if his flesh were rotting, it took on a much more diseased appearance. His face lost all human semblance as enormous pustules that leaked a murky liquid formed. His hands too took on a distinctly more clawed appearance. His fingertips narrowed and sharpened, looking very much like tools that could literally tear a person apart. _

"_Oh shit," Saito said as he quickly stood up and away from the boy. Taking a glance around himself, Saito saw that all the others in the bus were undergoing similar metamorphosis. "Oh shit!"_

_He had no time to ponder over this unexplainable situation. There was only an instinctive knowledge that if he stayed here long enough for them to finish their transformation, he would undoubtedly be torn apart limb from limb and killed. That knowledge compelled Saito to move._

_Rising from his seat, Saito forced his way through the narrow aisle of the bus and towards the front. There he kicked the door open and stumbled out. What awaited him was a scene of pure carnage._

_All around, people were writhing on the ground, undergoing the same changes as those in the bus were. Worse, totaled cars littered the streets, having crashed when their drivers had lost control after being dosed by that mysterious red gas. Even the sky itself seemed to be dying, as it was dyed a crimson red as far as he could see. _

_Still coughing, Saito began half-jogging, half-staggering his way back home, ignoring the burning pain in his body and the hellish screams of the damned that rent the air. It felt like hours before Saito finally arrived at the door of his home. After a moment of fumbling with his keys with shaky fingers, Saito entered his house._

"_M-Mom! D-Dad!" Saito called out. "Are you here?"_

_No reply came, and Saito swallowed nervously. While his house normally felt warm and welcoming, today, at this moment, it seemed too large, cavernous, foreboding. Even so, he took a hesitant step forward and began moving deeper into his home._

"_Mom! Dad!"_

_This time, there was a reply: a low, guttural moan. _

_Cautiously, Saito followed the source of the sound, tracking it to his parents' room. Very carefully, he cracked open the door and peeked inside. _

_What he saw next caused Saito to collapse to his hands and knees and lose his lunch. _

_Two monsters were slowly shuffling around the room. Their face and body had been so distorted that he could no longer recognize them underneath their bloated and diseased flesh, but even so, he knew that these... _things_ were his parents. He could tell because they were wearing his mom and dad's nightclothes. _

"_Mom," Saito whispered in tears between his heaving. "Dad."_

_The sound of Saito vomiting attracted the attention of his former parents, now monsters. They turned their mutilated faces towards the door and, just like in the bus, Saito knew that he had to run away. Now._

_Immediately, Saito jumped up to his feet and sprinted as fast as he could. Behind him, he could hear the sound of wood smashing as the two monsters crashed without care through the door, breaking it to splinters. _

_Risking a quick glance over his shoulder, Saito saw that these monsters were unbelievably fast. They were already gaining on him. Saito knew that with their speed and his currently debilitated physical state, he would be unable to outrun such monsters outdoors, where there was little place for him to hide – more so when factoring in that there were undoubtedly many more of such monsters prowling outside. _

_That meant that here and now, he needed to fight. And what that meant was that he needed a weapon._

_Unfortunately, even after coming to the United States, where gun laws were notoriously less strict than Japan's, neither of his parents had been keen on guns, so there was no firearms in the house. That meant that there was only one place to go to get a weapon._

_Saito ran for the kitchens. _

_Once there, he quickly picked out two of the biggest kitchen knives his family had from the dish rack and turned to face the monsters that had once been his parents. Just in time, too. His "mom" lunged at him with bestial ferocity from clear across the kitchen. With adrenaline pumping through his body like never before, Saito screamed in order to suppress his fear and desperation and slashed one knife across the monster's face. It reeled backwards, making a rasping sound as it did, almost as if it was surprised that Saito had fought back. Without giving it time to recover, Saito finished it off by lunging forward and stabbing the second knife directly into the monster's ear and into its brain. Though the stainless steel met with considerable resistance from the bones, and though it broke in half after piercing through regardless, the monster died all the same. _

_At the same time as the first monster collapsed with a knife still sticking out of its head, Saito's "dad" rushed him. Gritting his teeth, Saito met the creature's charge with one of his own, and used the momentum to stab his knife into the monster's face. Somehow, Saito managed to pierce the monster's eye and plunge the blade straight into its brain. In its death throes, the monster flailed out wildly, and managed to catch Saito with its sharpened claws._

"_Agh!" Saito cried out as his shirt was torn apart and four long, thin, red lines were left across his chest. Violently, Saito kicked the monster back and stumbled away from it, as he clutched at his chest. The thing fell, thrashed about for a few seconds more, and then went still. _

_Saito labored heavily for breath, his chest heaving up and down as he greedily sucked in air. He had done it. He had survived, not unwounded, but he was alive nevertheless. He had beaten the monsters that were trying to kill him._

_Monsters that had once been his parents._

_Slowly, Saito looked at his hands now slick with the intermingled blood of his mother, his father, and himself. Then, unable to bear neither the guilt of murdering his parents nor the horror of seeing what they had become, Saito let loose a maddened scream that echoed throughout the now empty rooms and halls of his home._

"Is that why you refuse to join me?"

"No. Whether or not my family died because of you, the moment you turned me into _this,_ I would have still definitely tried to kill you. However, it's because of what you did to my family that I _hate_ you."

_With shaky fingers, Saito pried open the lid to some canned tuna that he had managed to scavenge from the ruins lifeless land that had once been Manhattan. He was not aware of the full extent to which the apocalypse had spread, but as far as Saito knew, he was the only living person left. Everyone else was either dead or transformed into hideous monsters. At the very least, that was the conclusion he was forced to accept, seeing as how it had been over half a month since he had last seen another human being; since he had killed his parents._

_Ever since then, Saito had managed to survive by carefully scavenging through the dead land for food and weapons. It had been difficult, and he had nearly died more times than he could count, but still he survived. He survived, even when there was no meaning to his survival. His family was already dead, and he himself would likely follow sooner or later, whether by his sickness or by one of the various monsters that now littered the land. Was there a point to all this effort? Was there a reason for him to continue to live in this hell? Every day was full of fear and suffering – fear from being ambushed and killed, fear from not being able to find enough food or potable water, and fear of the loneliness. He could hardly sleep anymore due to both the nightmares he now consistently had, and due to the fear that he might be found and killed in his sleep._

_Saito coughed and wheezed and leaned against the alley wall for support. It was getting worse, he noted almost idly as he slid down to sit on the ground. Ever since he had first breathed in that red gas that had started all of this death and destruction, he had taken ill and had never really recovered from it. Every day, in order to live, he had to challenge not only the external perils that hid around every corner, but also struggle against the lethargy and pain in his body that only seemed to increase day by day._

_Saito tossed aside the aluminum lid to the can and pinched some tuna between his index finger and thumb and ate it. It did not take long for him to finish the measly meal, and he carelessly threw aside the can afterward. That was it. That had been the last of his emergency rations. If he wanted to find more food, he would probably need to head to a new location, as he had picked the area around here clean of whatever edible things had been left. _

_As he stood up and turned to exit the alley, a sudden sound caused Saito to freeze. He swallowed down a lump in his throat and tightly gripped both the knife and gun holstered at his hip. What was he about to fight? Was it one of those zombies, like the one his parents had turned into? Or would it be one of the monstrous, gorillalike creatures with massive claws? If it was the former, he could fight, so long as their numbers did not exceed more than two or three. If it was the latter, he would need to pray that he hadn't been noticed yet and run and hide quickly. Those things were too powerful for him to face with a reasonable chance of survival. Of course, if he was already spotted, he might not have a choice in the matter._

_Not for the first time, Saito wished he could have used the guns he had found more freely. Unfortunately, prior experience had already taught him that the sound of gunfire had a nasty tendency to attract the notice of every monster within a very wide radius to him. Given that even the slowest of the monsters were faster than him at their top speed, that was a very dangerous prospective. Not to mention, finding ammunition was a difficult thing to do in this wasteland. Thus, despite all their power, they were ultimately much more trouble than they were worth. Since then, Saito had elected to use silent weapons, such as knives, instead if he could help it, using guns only in the most extreme situations._

_Slowly, Saito turned around. To his utter shock, standing before him was not a monster, but another human. The shock quickly gave way to a sort of drunk relief, and Saito could feel tears well up in his eyes. He had no idea who this man dressed in a black leather jacket and with a grey hoodie was, but he honestly could not care less. Just the simple fact that there was another human being for companionship was enough for him._

"_Hello," Saito said as he let go of his weapons and approached the man in a friendly manner. "I'm Saito Hiraga."_

"_I know who you are," the man smirked. "You're the one who survived."_

_Faster than Saito could blink, the man's arm morphed into a long whiplike thing that slammed into his chest and pinned him against the wall. _

"_Gah!" Saito let out, as he was violently slammed against the stone surface on his back. _

"_You are interesting," the man said as he approached Saito. "To have survived for so long, alone, here in the heart of my territory is a remarkable feat." He smiled a smile colder than that of death itself. "You are interesting," he repeated._

_The man plunged his other arm straight _into_ Saito's chest. Excruciating pain filled Saito's senses, forcing him to release a bloodcurdling scream, and leaving him almost completely numb to the feeling of something slithering from the man's arm and directly into his body. The last thing Saito remembered before falling unconscious was the face of the smirking man as he dropped him to the ground._

"I gave you everything! I gave you the power to rule over men! I freed you from the bindings of life and death! I offered you the chance to help me create a new and better world! A utopia! And this is how you repay me?"

"You _took _from me everything!" Saito lashed back. "My family, my dreams, my friends! You took them all away from me, Alex Mercer! And the only thing that you gave me in return" - Both of Saito's hands and arms changed. His hands became a set of four long, wickedly sharp, talonlike claws, while his arms took on the appearance of thickly coiled, black tendrils - "is the power to take my revenge."

With a ferocious roar, Saito charged forward, and the battle for supremacy between the two most powerful monsters began.

* * *

><p>Tiffania yawned as she slowly blinked her eyes open. From where she laid on her bed, the sunlight freely streamed in through her window and basked her in it. The warmth felt good to the half-elf, and she decided to linger there a while longer before rising to prepare breakfast for herself and the orphan children under her charge.<p>

As she laid there, she thought of her sixteenth birthday that was coming up in a month. She remembered something her adoptive elder sister, Matilda, had once told her: Most mages would oftentimes summon their first familiar as a sort of coming of age ceremony. She wondered if she would be doing so as well. More importantly, Tiffania wondered if she wanted to.

On one hand, having a companion, even an animal one, would be nice to have. If she managed to summon a strong one, like a wolf or a bear, then it could also help defend her and the children. Given how the civil war was still raging throughout the country, having some protection would be very nice to have in these dangerous times. On the other hand, Tiffania doubted that she had the ability to properly summon a familiar. She had one spell and one spell only that she was proficient at. All the others that Matilda had attempted to teach her had been met with mediocre progress at best, outright failure at worst. That was why Tiffania herself knew best that she, as a mage, was not very good at all.

_Well, I probably won't have to worry about that,_ Tiffania thought to herself. _Such magic is probably beyond what I am capable of, after all._

Leaving such thoughts aside, Tiffania stretched in her bed, and then rose to face the day.


	2. Inhuman - Part 1

_Author's Notes:_

_So, it seems that a couple people have already stated that they don't like this fic because it's going to be based on Prototype 2. That's unfortunate, but I can understand that. I too hated how the developers made Alex Mercer the bad guy when they had set up a perfectly good sequel hook in the original. I mean, why couldn't Prototype 2 be about Alex Mercer vs Pariah? It made me sad. _

_That said, no matter whether I or anyone else dislike how Prototype 2 was done, the fact doesn't change that it _is_ canonical. Alex Mercer really did go all evil. Alex Mercer really was killed by James Heller. And I really did refuse to buy Prototype 2 for a year solely because of that fact._

_Now, a series of Prototype comics _were_ published that bridges together the events of Prototype and Prototype 2. You can go ahead and look it up in the prototype wiki (search "The Anchor"). If you don't feel like looking it up, don't worry. It will be summarized in the narrative in this chapter, with perhaps very slight tweaks on my part in order to fill in a couple of minor gaps. If you don't feel like reading this chapter because by this point you decided that you refuse to read any Prototype fanfic that's based on Prototype 2, then look it up. Or don't. Really, if you hate Prototype 2 that much, reading the summary of the comics is only going to make you even angrier. _

_That said, I was doing some perusing a while back, and it seems like a major complaint people have about Prototype 2 is this: how the hell was James Heller able to beat Alex Mercer? _

_There were all sorts of different theories about it, such as how Alex had, by the time of Prototype 2, devoted himself to being more of a leader than a fighter, making plans and scheming from the background. James, on the other hand, was a pure fighter. _

_I disagree with that theory, and my own personal theory is this: James Heller was _never_ as strong as Alex Mercer. Alex was stronger, faster, and had more experience with their powers. However, like the saying goes, it's not the strong that win, it's the winner that's strong. In other words, James never needed to become _as_ strong as Alex. He only needed to be __strong _enough_ to be able to challenge him. I think the game also makes it pretty clear that this is the case, as Alex is pretty much better than James in almost every regard (more HP, faster, does more damage, etc.). _

_To use an analogy, James Heller would be like a person wielding a dagger while Alex was a person using a sword. The sword obviously has the advantage over the dagger, but the wielder of the sword can still die to the wielder of the dagger, depending on the many uncertain variables that are inherent to fighting._

_Also, if any of you guys are wondering why this chapter came out so quickly after the first, the prologue, it's because this fic is actually one that I started working on a while back, but then stopped. I had 4 chapters completed and a 5__th__ one in the works when I stopped writing this fic. I recently came back to this fic, took a look at it, and decided that I'm going to resume working on it. I'm going to be trying to release the stuff I have done at a fairly quick pace (probably one every two or so days), if I can. I'm also taking time to read through it, edit it, and tweak it, because I have some things I want to do differently than what I had first intended when I started this so long ago. Once I hit the fifth chapter, my pace will likely dramatically slow down compared to my currently planned pace._

_With that said, please, please, _please _leave any comments and critiques (especially the critiques) you might have, but please keep it civil. That would be awesome._

**Inhuman - Part 1  
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Tiffania sat on a chair on the porch of her house and smiled as she gently and idly strummed her harp, its soft melody drifting through the air. In the distance, somewhere in the glade where she made her home, she could hear the children of her orphanage laugh as they ran about playing a game of tag. She could not help but smile whenever she heard them laughing. That despite their tragic circumstances, each and every one of them having lost their family as a direct result of the ongoing civil war, they still had the fortitude to be able to laugh and play like children ought to was heartwarming.

Yet, despite their company, Tiffania still found herself often feeling lonely. She loved the children dearly, but their relationship was like that of an older sister taking care of her younger siblings. No, rather, it was akin to a mother-child relationship. And with her own adoptive older sister gone so often in order to work and provide them with income, Tiffania found herself wishing that she had someone her age to talk with.

She wished that she had a friend.

Unfortunately, Tiffania sighed with a tinge of regret, that would probably never happen. She was a half-elf; human by day, elf by night, and neither in the end. She was an existence that was feared and despised by humans for being an elf, and hated and reviled by the elves for being a human. By the standards of both races, she was an abomination. In all the world, the only people still alive that did not think that way about her was her older sister and her young charges, though in the latter's case, it was because they had been taken under her wing before they had ever been fully indoctrinated into hating and fearing elves by the numerous human stories about the elven race.

Far from making friends, simply talking to another person was a deadly risk for Tiffania. If, by some chance or reason, the hat she normally used to cover her elven ears when going into town or talking to other people were to be removed, she would be captured and executed. Thus, every conversation she held had to be kept as brief as possible, and such brevity was a poor catalyst for making friends with others. On the rare cases where her ears were revealed, Tiffania had been forced to use the one and only spell she was able to use proficiently to erase all memories of herself from the person's or persons' mind.

It was truly a lonely way of life.

_Though, perhaps I am only thinking such things because it will be my birthday in a few days,_ Tiffania mused.

Tiffania set down her harp on the ground beside her, as she leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. Perhaps a quick nap under the warm and gentle sun would improve her mood. However, it was then that she heard soft, familiar footsteps, and she instantly snapped her eyes open and looked towards the direction of the approaching person.

"Matilda?" Tiffania called out cautiously as she stood up and slowly began reaching for her wand, which she kept tucked in the sash around her waist. "Is that you?"

From down the path that led from the little glade that her orphanage was in to Westwood Village proper, a green-haired woman dressed in a traveler's clothes and cloak appeared.

"Heh," the woman said. "Great hearing as usual."

"Matilda!" Tiffania cried out joyfully, as she ran over to hug her adopted older sister.

"Easy, easy, Tiffania," Matilda grinned, as she patted the half-elf on the head with one hand.

"What are you doing back so early?" Tiffania asked excitedly. "I thought you would be gone for at least another month because of your job in Gallia."

"As if I wouldn't come back for my little sister's birthday," Matilda snorted. "Well... Even though I said that, I'm sorry, Tiffania, but I won't actually be able to stay here long enough for your birthday."

"You won't?" Tiffania's long, pointed ears drooped sadly.

"Yeah," Matilda said apologetically. "I'm only here so early because I quit that job in Gallia after I was offered a better paying one in Tristain. My new employer wants me to start working in just a few days, so I have to leave tomorrow."

"Oh, okay," Tiffania sighed resignedly. "I understand."

"Still," Matilda continued. "I can't exactly leave you and the children here alone can I? So since your birthday is coming up, how about we go ahead and have you summon your own familiar? Think of it as your birthday present."

"My own familiar? Really?" Tiffania's ears twitched eagerly for a moment, and then froze as she frowned. "But... Are you sure I'll be able to summon one properly? I mean, you know that I'm not that good at magic."

Matilda smiled fondly at her adopted younger sister. "I know you can do it. I believe in you."

Tiffania smiled and nodded. "I understand. I'll do my best."

"Good," Matilda patted Tiffania on the head again. "But let's do it tonight, after we have dinner. It's best to do this when you're relaxed and focused. Besides, it's been a while, so let's have some time to chat first."

* * *

><p>"Fucking Blackwatch does not know when to fucking quit," Saito growled to himself, as he surveyed his latest batch of victims: three heavily modified M1 Abrams tanks, four Apache gunships, and the bloodstains that served as the only remains of the several dozens of Blackwatch soldiers that he had consumed.<p>

It had been exactly three months since the viral being known as Alex Mercer caused the second outbreak of the blacklight virus; almost two months since Saito had been found and infected by Mercer himself, turning him into a being very much like Mercer; and a little less than one month since Saito had fought, killed and consumed Alex Mercer and ended the outbreak.

Once the threat of Alex Mercer and his "Mercer Virus" had been removed, Saito had hoped that Blackwatch would leave him in peace. It was a foolish thing to hope for, he knew, and it was a hope that was quickly and summarily crushed by Blackwatch themselves.

With Alex Mercer gone, Blackwatch had instead devoted the entirety of their resources towards containing Saito in the former Red Zone and then attempting to kill him. They had been successful on only one of those counts. They had managed to completely trap him within the Red Zone. On the several occasions Saito had attempted to break out and escape his prison, he was forcibly repelled by an insane amount of firepower from the blockade of ships, tanks, aircraft, and soldiers set around the perimeter of the entire zone. However, trapping him was all they could do. By consuming Alex, Saito was without a doubt the strongest being on the face of the planet. No matter how many troops they sent to try to kill him, Saito easily destroyed them all. Thus, the two forces found themselves in a stalemate: Saito could not escape the Red Zone, but neither could Blackwatch destroy him within the labyrinth of ruined skyscrapers and buildings and roads.

Though, Saito understood somewhere in the back of his mind that sooner or later Blackwatch would probably tire of this game they were playing and just fire a nuke to try to kill him. The only reason they hadn't yet was probably because it would be very, very difficult to conceal such a thing from the mass media, not to mention that it was not entirely guaranteed that it would work against him. After all, Alex Mercer had once survived the explosion of a nuclear bomb from near point blank range. How much more resilient, then, would Saito be, being the one who had consumed that very same Alex Mercer?

Saito casually tossed aside the burning remains of a freshly destroyed Apache that laid in his path, sending it flying into the wall of a nearby skyscraper and causing it to explode, as he walked down the cracked and decrepit streets, sighing at the pointlessness of it all.

He understood intellectually that Blackwatch's official purpose was to find and destroy viruses and other biohazards, and that he himself was now the greatest and worst potential threat to all living things in the history of mankind; a monster without equal. Unethical though they may be, it was still their job to kill him. But there was an emotional side of him that raged at the unfairness of it all. He had been human once too, and he had had human desires, goals, and dreams. Being forced to become a monster was not one of them. He had _never_ wantedto become a monster. And hadn't he sufficiently proven that he was not out to kill humanity? Hadn't he proven that when he killed Alex, ended the second outbreak, and not caused a third outbreak of his own? God knew that he could have done that easily, especially since he held not only the memories and skills of Alex Mercer, but of all those he consumed as well – specifically, Elizabeth Greene.

Saito chuckled bitterly at his own faulty reasoning. True, he had saved Manhattan, possibly even the entire world, from Alex Mercer, but that didn't matter. No matter what good deed he did, no matter how heroic it was, it would never change the fact that he, as the second and now sole remaining blacklight being, was still a threat to the entire world by merely existing. Even so, he still wanted to try to leave this horrid past behind and rebuild a semblance of a normal life. He just wanted to go back to how things used to be.

Of course, that in turn led to the question of just what it was that he should do. Even if he somehow managed to escape the Red Zone, was there a point? Would he be able to somehow rejoin humanity simply by passing off as one of them? Was there still a place amongst them for him?

Alex's memories came to the forefront of Saito's mind. This was something that Alex himself had gone through. In the time after he had saved New York City, he had found himself becoming disillusioned with humanity. The fact that there were humans that were totally willing to nuke millions in order to defeat a virus that was already being defeated, albeit slowly, made Alex question the nature of humans. That was when doubt started to seep into his mind and when he began to ask himself the same questions that Saito was asking himself now. So he traveled the world in order to find something to believe in. A search for meaning.

He found none.

He had been close. Very close. At the very brink, when he found himself just a step short of becoming completely disgusted with humanity and abandoning it, he had found a woman that... well, perhaps _love_ wasn't the proper word, but he had found a woman he cared for. And because his sister, Dana Mercer, had been comatose at that time with no sign of recovery, that woman had served as his last anchor to humanity – the one and only person who gave him hope for the human race and let him believe that humans were worth protecting after all. She was the one person who kept him from becoming a complete monster.

And then that woman stole his money and shot him in the head from behind with a gun, thus ending his journey to find meaning and solidifying Alex's belief that humanity was not worth saving. Instead, he came to believe that all human beings were ultimately selfish, greedy creatures, and completely worthless. It was this new belief that propelled him into causing the second outbreak.

And so, Saito wondered: Did he even _want_ to rejoin the human race anymore? Saito wanted to believe that Alex was wrong about humanity. He wanted to believe that while there definitely were many rotten humans in the world, there were also many truly good ones as well. But every day, Saito would fend off another assault by Blackwatch, and every day he would question whether or not it was he who was wrong and Alex who was right. And each time Saito questioned himself, he could feel himself slowly beginning to see it Alex's way.

All the memories of those he and Alex had consumed were a part of him now. Their thoughts, their feelings, their beliefs – all of it. And they swirled and screamed within his mind like haunting ghosts or devils.

It was these memories that caused Saito to doubt his own beliefs about humanity. In the vast collection of memories he possessed, all he saw were humans that were ultimately just vile, selfish creatures unworthy of being sav-

Saito shook his head vigorously. He would not allow himself to think that way. He _could_ not allow himself to think that way. For in doing so, he would surely end up following in the footsteps of Alex Mercer.

Despite himself, Saito couldn't help but chuckle bitterly again. This must have been why Alex had been so nonchalant about his death. He believed that Saito would find himself in the same position he had been in without fail. He believed completely that, like him, Saito would find no reason to love humanity and many, many reasons to end it. Alex believed that Saito would become like him.

_Well, Alex,_ Saito practically snarled his thoughts in his head. _I hope you can still hear me, because I have two words to say to you: Fuck. You._

Though he was most certainly a monster, it did not mean that he needed to behave like one. And for all of humanity's sins and mistakes, Saito wanted them to live and prosper. He wanted to believe that there humanity was fundamentally good, or at least that there were good humans, and that those humans ought to live and prosper. He wanted them to have a chance to live with their families and to realize their dreams.

_But then,_ a quiet, seductive little voice in the back of Saito's mind whispered, _what you want to believe is not necessarily the same as what you actually believe._

A low rumbling sound alerted Saito to the presence of Blackwatch. From further down the street, two tanks rounded the corner and took aim at Saito. They each launched an artillery shell at him. Saito sighed and transformed his left arm into a thick, spiky, jet-black shield large enough to cover his entire body. The biomass that formed the shield was hardened and condensed to the point that when the artillery shells hit the shield and exploded, neither it nor Saito's body had even a scratch on them. From up in the sky, gunships appeared with the characteristic loud, beating sounds that all helicopters gave off. Some of them served as transport ships, and they let down lines to allow the Blackwatch soldiers to rappel down.

"Blackwatch," Saito snarled in disgust.

It was too bad. Had these men simply left him alone, they would have continued living. Even if it was true that he wanted humans to live, he was not so merciful as to allow an attempt on his life go by without retaliation, especially from an organization like that of Blackwatch. If they or anyone else sought to kill him, then he would slaughter them first.

After all, in the end he was still just a monster.

Saito began running towards the Blackwatch attack force. One of the many abilities that the Blacklight virus gave Saito were superhuman physical abilities. Thus, when he ran, he did so at speeds that far outstripped that of any living thing on the planet. At his top speed, even most machines, such as those tanks and gunships, either failed to keep up with him or were only barely able to do so.

The Blackwatch soldiers began firing at him with their guns, while the gunships above let loose a screaming volley of missiles. In response, Saito transformed entirely. His human appearance gave way to an entirely unearthly armored visage. As if rising up from beneath his skin, Saito became clad in a suit of black armor that more closely resembled that of a chitinous exoskeleton rather than any man-made armor.

Against the hardened protection of Saito's armor, an ability he had directly inherited from consuming Alex Mercer, the bullets simply ricocheted off of him harmlessly.

Saito charged forward in a zigzag pattern, ignoring the scream of the missiles that howled through the air. However, Saito put only minimal effort into trying to dodge. With the armor on, his speed and maneuverability were lowered, so his ability to dodge logically suffered. Instead, Saito had elected to take on the risk of being hit by the gunships' powerful weaponry. As he was now, he could afford to be hit by a few of them. They would still hurt and slow him down some, but it was nowhere near enough to stop him.

The missiles landed and exploded in blooming fire. Saito grunted a bit as he felt concussive force and heat strike against him, but he pushed on through it. Then from that fire, like some sort of hellish demon of myth, Saito emerged.

Before the helicopters could fire another round of their Hellfire missiles, Saito shed his armor in order to regain his sacrificed speed. Using that burst of momentum, Saito jumped high into the air. As he neared the apex of his jump, Saito prepared to transform his arms into hammerfists in order to crush the tanks from above. However, just before he could, a shining ellipsoid suddenly appeared in front of him. Saito's eyes went wide as he flew right into the mysterious thing as if it were an open window.

Saito found himself tumbling in a vast space of pure blackness, and he shouted in surprise. But when he shouted, he could hear no voice in the infinite darkness, and save for his body, there was nothing else that he could see. Suddenly, a powerful, electrifying shock ran through Saito's body. Saito winced and clenched his teeth, as he grunted with pain, though that sound too was lost in the darkness. To Saito, it felt as if he had ripped apart a live power line with his bare hands. Unfortunately for whoever had done that, Saito was far more resilient than most. He quickly recovered from the paralyzing shock just in time so that when a bright light flashed and he was dumped unceremoniously onto warm grass, he was able to quickly recover. Saito rolled with the momentum, quickly regaining his balance and getting back to his feet. He kept his stance low and crouched, prepared like a cornered beast ready to lash out in an instant.

Flicking his gaze to and fro, Saito immediately began taking in his surroundings.

He was in a small clearing in a forest. Underneath the soft moonlight, he could see there were three small wooden houses here that were arranged in a small arc. The central house was two stories tall and the other two were only one story tall. Both were made of wooden logs. In front of those houses, not a few feet from him, were two women, causing Saito to cock his head in confusion.

The first was a woman with green hair – dyed, Saito assumed – fair in appearance, and with the tanned skin and well toned body of someone who exercised outdoors a fair amount. She appeared to be perhaps in her early twenties and was dressed in a loose pair pants, a long sleeve shirt, and brown leather boots. Though she looked surprised to see Saito, she also looked wary, cautious of his every movement.

The other was a younger looking girl. She had long, golden hair, a slim, graceful body, and... very well developed breasts, to say the least. In one hand, she held a small, wooden stick about one foot in length. She was dressed in a simple and somewhat crude green tunic, indicators of its homespun status. It was open at the shoulders and back and held up by a thin cord at her neck. The green one-piece came down to her mid-thighs, where it was split open along the side and laced together with leather cords, revealing the pair of white shorts she wore underneath. On her legs and arms, she wore white leggings and long white gloves that were cut into diamond-shaped patterns at random intervals. Finishing her outfit was a white sash around her hip, tied off to the side into a ribbon, and a pair of white sandals on her feet.

Most curiously, however, were the girl's ears, which were long and pointed so that they poked their way out of the girl's long hair.

_Zelda- no, elf ears?_ Saito thought, instantly making the connection. _Must have been done through plastic surgery, or maybe a really weird mutation._

Saito had no idea what was going on, but three things were immediately clear to him: The first was that he was no longer in the Red Zone, which was good news. The second was that these two did not appear to be either Blackwatch or Gentek. The third was that he wanted to consume them, to add their biomass to his own, and to learn what they knew. It was an urge, a hunger, he had found himself feeling more and more often as of late. Saito quickly and savagely suppressed that monstrous instinct.

Upon seeing Saito stare at her ears, the blonde girl flushed pink and quickly hid her ears by covering them with her hands.

"Um... P-Please do not be afraid," the blonde girl said hurriedly, almost fearfully. "I'm not going to hurt you."

Saito simply stared at the girl with what he knew must have been a look of complete bewilderment on his face. Then he snorted, and began laughing in amusement at the ludicrous statement; a low, soft, rumbling sound that came from his stomach.

"Whoever you are, take my advice," Saito chuckled. "If you want people to be afraid of you, it helps to actually look scary. And if you don't stammer or try to hide yourself."

"You... You're not afraid of me?" the girl asked incredulously, as she slowly removed her hands from her ears.

"You have _nothing_ on Elizabeth Greene," Saito said darkly, grimacing at the memories he had inherited from Alex Mercer about the one codenamed "Mother." Now _that_ was a scary woman. The scariest. Well, if she could have still been called a woman, anyway. She was definitely female, at least.

"Who?" the blonde girl said in complete confusion.

"Never mind," Saito said, as he quickly refocused himself to the present situation. "Who are you and where am I?

"Oh, yes. Sorry. My name is Tiffania Westwood," the blonde girl said nervously. She gestured at the green-haired woman beside her. "This is my older sister, Matilda. And you're in Westwood Village, in Albion."

"I'm Saito Hiraga," Saito said vaguely, as he swiftly rifled through his vast stores of memories.

Albion, according to the memories of several historians, was the oldest known name for the island of Great Britain. Why Tiffania was using that ancient name instead of the modern one was curious, but ultimately irrelevant. The important question was this: How the hell did he suddenly go from New York all the way to Britain? All Saito remembered was some kind of portal-like thing, a vast expanse of darkness, and then he was inexplicably here.

There was another important question to ask: Why had he been brought here? By whom? Seeing as how these two girls were the only ones here, it seemed that they were the ones responsible. Did they work for someone? A company? The government? Had he been brought here purposefully or was it just an accident? If it was the former, what reason could they possibly have?

Probably, Saito guessed, it was about acquiring an unstoppable living weapon in order to use for their own purposes.

Saito glanced up to the skies, briefly considering the idea of using the stars and constellations to try to help him ascertain his position, when he saw something that caused him to nearly choke on his saliva.

_What the hell?_ Saito thought as he gawked up at the sky.

There, hanging high in the sky, was not one, but two moons.

Two. Moons.

Suddenly, Saito felt the urge to consume these two return with a vengeance. Wherever he was, he was no longer on Earth. And whatever was happening, he wanted- no, he _needed _to know right now. Once more, Saito forcibly repressed that instinct.

"Um... Even though I'm an elf, are you really not afraid of me, Saito?" Tiffania asked in a mixture of disbelief and wonder.

"No, I'm not," Saito said automatically, taking the revelation that she was a genuine "elf" as a simple fact of the conversation. Whether she really was one of those mythological creatures or whether she was just a delusional girl did not matter at the moment. What mattered was getting his bearings; to find out just what was going on.

"Huh," Matilda said. "You're weird. But in a good way."

Saito grunted in response. "Where is this 'Albion,' and how did I get here?"

"It's the floating island country in Halkeginia." Tiffania frowned and cocked her head, looking at Saito as if he had asked a question with a really obvious answer. Saito supposed that to her, that was exactly how it was. "Are you not from Halkeginia?"

A floating island? Halkeginia? Saito rubbed his temples, feeling his head starting to spin. A floating island? Impossible! The physics behind it would have made the very concept of it beyond ludicrous! And Halkeginia? Where the hell was that?

"Something like that," Saito finally said.

"As for how you got here... um... You see... I..." Tiffania paused nervously, took a deep breath, and then blurted out in one go, "The truth is that I used the Summon Servant spell to summon a familiar, and that was what brought you here, and I am really sorry about that."

Saito blinked. "You summoned me," Saito echoed. " With a spell. As in... magic?"

"Yes," Tiffania nodded.

Saito sighed as he pinched the bridge of his nose. It was almost a relief that he wasn't even feeling that surprised anymore. Never had be been as thankful as he was now that he had consumed so many people who were fans of fantasy stories and games. For while the knowledge from the memories of the many dozens upon dozens of the unethical but admittedly brilliant scientists of Gentek were screaming at him that this was all clearly impossible, the memories of those fantasy fans made it much easier to adapt to this absurd development.

"All right," Saito finally said. At least he figured out who had brought him here and where he was, even if he had no idea where that place was. Now he just needed to find out _why_ he had been "summoned." "All right," Saito repeated. "So why me? Why summon me?"

"Actually, I messed up," Tiffania admitted abashedly. "Summon Servant isn't supposed to be able to summon humans."

"If that's the case, then no, you didn't," Saito muttered darkly to himself. "I'm not a human."

Tiffania blinked at Saito. "You're not?"

_Wow, good hearing,_ Saito thought, surprised she had managed to hear him speak. He took another glance at Tiffania's large, pointed ears. _Must be because she's an elf._

"Never mind that," Saito said, causing Tiffania to cock her head and frown. "In any case, if what you're saying is true, that I'm here by accident, then what was it that you were hoping to summon or do in the first place?"

"I'll explain that," Matilda said, and Saito turned to look at her directly. "The spell Tiffania used summons a familiar that is most appropriate for her. Typically, what this means is that a mage will summon a familiar that is of the same elemental type as their own affinity. For example, a water mage might summon a frog and a wind mage would probably summon some type of bird. However, the mage in question does not have any control of what familiar they manage to call forth. In other words, you were summoned by Tiffania in order to become her familiar because you are the best suited to be her familiar."

"Familiar?" Saito arched an eyebrow.

"Creatures that serve as a mage's loyal guardians and servants," Matilda explained, gesturing vaguely to the side with one hand. She scratched her head. "Though I've never heard of a human familiar before. Oh well. This is rather unusual, but it can't be helped. Tiffania, go ahead and finish the contract."

"Sister! I can't do that!" Tiffania cried out indignantly, before Saito could even utter a word of protest. "I'm sure Saito has his own home and family to return to. I have to help him return to them since I was the one who foolishly brought him here."

"But Tiffania," Matilda frowned. "You know that you can't summon another familiar since you already summoned him. If you don't finish the contract, you might never get another familiar."

"That's fine. It was my fault that Saito was taken away from his family and home, after all," Tiffania said briskly. She looked at Saito. "Where are you from?" she asked kindly. "If you're not from Halkeginia, then are you perhaps from Rub'al Khali? Wherever it is, let me help you return to your home."

Instead of answering right away, Saito stared curiously at Tiffania. From what he gathered, it sounded as if familiars were something important to these people, to mages. And if that was true, then the fact that she was willingly forgoing the opportunity to obtain her familiar was something either remarkable or insane, depending on perspective.

"I'm not from Rub'al Khali," Saito finally said. "And you don't need to worry about helping me get back home."

"No, please let me help," Tiffania insisted. "It's my fault that you're here. Please let me try to make amends."

Saito shook his head. "It's because I really don't want to return that you don't need to worry about it."

Returning to the Red Zone? Saito found himself thinking that if this person tried to send him back there, he'd have to kill her out of principle.

"But wouldn't your family worry about you?" Tiffania asked with concern.

"They're dead," Saito said bluntly.

"Oh, I'm so sorry," Tiffania apologized immediately. "I didn't mean to... I'm sorry."

"It's fine," Saito replied brusquely.

An awkward silence seized the atmosphere. Tiffania fidgeted nervously in place, and Saito felt a little guilty for being so harshly direct with his words, since it put the elf girl in a bad spot.

"What will you do from now on?" Matilda asked, breaking the silence. "Since Tiffania refuses to make you her familiar, you're free to go wherever you'd like."

Saito shrugged. "I don't know. I don't know anything about Halkeginia."

Although, Saito thought to himself, that could very quickly and easily change with just a few, quick meals.

"Um... Then," Tiffania said, "if you don't have anywhere to go, would you like to stay here?"

Saito considered her offer for a moment. More importantly, he considered Tiffania. She seemed like a kind and timid person. Perhaps a bit too naïve, though, considering that she was offering a place at her home to a complete stranger. Objectively speaking, Tiffania was an incredible beauty. Didn't she realize that if she had been unlucky and summoned an unsavory person, she would have been in incredible danger by making such an offer?

Then again, it's wasn't as if he was not dangerous either. Although with him, all Tiffania needed to worry about was being consumed alive, which may or may not be worse than being assaulted and raped. On one hand, Saito would give her a quick death, which to many might be preferable over lasting pain and humiliation. On the other hand, she would be literally eaten alive.

Truly, this was a question that was in the purview of philosophical ethics.

In any case, it'd be best if he didn't get too close to her, especially not with his own instincts demanding that he eat her. But... Saito hesitated. Maybe just for a little while. Just for a little while, maybe it would be all right for him to stay with them.

_As long as I keep to myself, I should be able to keep my instincts under control,_ Saito thought. He nodded, as if doing so would convince himself that his own flimsy argument was correct. He knew in truth that staying here would probably have only the opposite effect. Most likely, being here would make him even hungrier to consume Tiffania and Matilda. It was exactly like how if a succulent meal was placed in front of a starving person, then they would become even hungrier. Taken to its logical conclusion, there was a very good chance that at some point his instincts would overwhelm his rationality and self-control and compel him to consume them. But he was also tired. He was so tired of his only relations with people being one of murderous rage and death; both sides struggling to kill the other before they could do the same. Just for a little while, Saito wanted to be around people that did not want to kill him. And it was with that thought in mind that Saito answered Tiffania.

"All right," he said. "I will."

When Tiffania beamed at him, cheerfully unaware of what she had invited into her home, Saito couldn't help but feel even guiltier.

* * *

><p>Wales Tudor frowned and tapped his chin thoughtfully as he examined the table before him. Set on the piece of furniture was a miniature, three-dimensional map of Albion formed of sand and created and held together by minor earth magics. On that map were several blocks of red and blue, which were all set in various places. The positioning of the blocks effectively split the map into two uneven parts. The blue blocks, which represented the Royalist armies, held onto the larger western half. For the most part, they were centered around the center-most city of Albion, Saxe-Gotha. The red blocks, representing Reconquista, maintained their stronghold at the easternmost town of the island, the port town Rosais.<p>

As it stood, the civil war between the two forces was being won by the Royalists. However, it was a hard fought advantage. Every attempt the Royalists made at breaking through Reconquista's lines and pushing their troops back was met with fierce, almost fanatical resistance, forcing the Royalist troops to claw their way forward inch by bloody inch. But despite the resistance, it was a steady, inexorable process, one that was defined by its numerous skirmishes and small-scale fights more than any pitched battles. The Royalists simply could not be stopped by Reconquista.

Additionally, so long as the Royalists held onto Saxe-Gotha, they were able to freely choose when and where to attack thanks to the city's central position in Albion. This also meant that troops could easily be deployed and redeployed in order to defend or reinforce other positions. If Reconquista wanted even a glimmer of hope at winning this war, their rebellion, it was a matter of fact that they would need to take control of Saxe-Gotha. However, doing so would not be an easy thing. The entire city was protected by tall stone walls, making any attack against it a difficult one, even with only a bare minimum amount of soldiers defending it. Moreover, because Saxe-Gotha was the central base of operations for the Royalists, there were a great many soldiers garrisoned in the city. Furthermore, the land around Saxe-Gotha was mostly flat, making any form of large-scale attacks impossible to hide and easy pickings for the cannons stationed on the ramparts. All this together made for a formidable defensive advantage and had been what rebuffed all previous Reconquista attempts to conquer the city.

The sound of two sharp knocks on the door broke Wales out of his deep, brooding thoughts.

"Come in," Wales called out.

The door opened, and a tall man late in years walked in with calm, precise steps. He closed the door behind him and then saluted Wales by placing his right fist over his heart.

"Smith," Wales said. "What is it?"

Smith was Wales's teacher, trusted adviser, and close confidant. Though he was now retired, he had once been the admiral of the entirety of Albion's famous air fleet. Even now, years after his retirement, he still carried himself with all the poise and strictness of a true, professional military man. He had been a very strict teacher, Wales thought as he briefly reminisced on Smith's military lessons from his youth, but he had also been one of the best. It was Smith who was directly responsible for almost everything Wales knew about war and the military. They had been invaluable lessons that had always served Wales well.

"The latest reports have come in from the front, Your Highness," Smith said, as he presented Wales with a sheaf of papers.

"Thank you, Smith," Wales said, as he began skimming through the papers. "Give me a brief overview. Are there any changes?"

"None, Your Highness," Smith said. "Reconquista's troops are maintaining their positions the best they can, but they are being slowly pushed back by our forces. The majority of our air fleet are maintaining their blockade on Rosais, preventing aid from Reconquista's unknown benefactor. Our position remains strong."

"I see," Wales murmured as he continued reading through the reports. "Thank you, Smith."

"Of course, Your Highness," Smith said.

"Hm..." Wales looked up from the reports at Smith. "I believe that now would be a good time for us to make a concentrated effort to break Reconquista's line. According to the reports of our spies, morale is already wavering amongst the Reconquista's troops, contrary to their strong resistance. If we can make one, solid hammerblow into their forces, it should be enough to scatter them enough for us to recapture Rosais and end this war." Wales nodded once to himself. "Smith, I want you to make the arrangements. Send the generals a message that they are to begin consolidating our troops and supplies in preparation for a new campaign. Tell them we'll be there for a council of war in four days."

"Yes, Your Highness. But... four days?" Smith frowned. "That is a rather long time to wait before moving."

"I know," Wales sighed. "It's father. He wants to meet with me, and you know how he is. Too busy thinking about his next feast and party than to care about the war or his son. Three days. That is when he told me to meet with him. We'll depart on the morning after."

"I see. Prince, if I may," Smith said. "Might I have permission to speak freely?"

Wale's felt his eyebrows rise. "Of course."

"Your Highness," Smith began. "You look as if you haven't slept in days. How long have you been here staring at this map?"

"Today is the Day of Void, yes?" Wales said. Smith nodded. "Then I suppose it's been two days?"

Smith sighed and shook his head. "Prince Wales, you must rest. It is unwise for you to be pushing yourself this hard. It is not beneficial to your body and mind."

"I can't help it," Wales said. "There's something about this war that bothers me immensely. It feels as if there is something... wrong."

"What do you mean, Your Highness?"

"Primarily, I'm concerned about their unknown benefactor," Wales said. "Who are they? Why did they incite such a rebellion? Where are they from? What possible reason could they have? The only clue we have as to their identity is the fact that they almost singlehandedly funded and supplied the entire rebellion, at least initially. This implies that whoever the mysterious benefactor is, he or she is a noble of considerable wealth. In fact, it's more likely that one of the governments of the other countries is responsible for this in order to destabilize Albion as a whole. I do not believe that Tristain is the benefactor. Gallia is possible. Their king is known to be a lunatic, doing the most insane of things for no other reason than because he can. Germania? Maybe. Perhaps. They've always been aggressive and one for expansionism. I'm certain they'd love to annex Albion into Germanian territory. As for Romalia-"

"Your Highness," Smith interrupted, "surely you can't think that the holy country, the one led by the Pope himself, would ever dare to do such a base and criminal thing as inciting a rebellion?"

"I don't know," Wales said. "But Reconquista's goal, to unite all Halkeginian nations under one banner and take back the Holy Lands from the elves, is one that is remarkably similar to what the Pope has been advocating for years, is it not? Granted, the Pope had never taken such militaristic actions, but the underlying motives are the same."

"Although that is a curiosity," Smith said, "it is all ultimately irrelevant, is it not? Knowing who they are changes nothing about what we must do. After we have crushed the rebellion, then we can investigate the benefactor and begin, as they say, pointing fingers."

"I understand that, Smith," Wales said tiredly. "Still, I can't help but feel that there's something more to this war than just a rebellion. It feels as if this is all just a play, and we its actors, no, its puppets. It feels as if we're all being manipulated for some purpose I cannot even begin to fathom. Call it paranoia if you'd like, but I find it utterly preposterous that even that blasted Cromwell would try and declare war against the royalty with that ragtag group of rebels he calls an army. Their 'troops' are half-trained, their logistics are a mess, and their chances of victory is almost nil. It's suicide! This entire war" - Wales gestured angrily at the map - "it's meaningless! A needless and inexcusable loss of life! He _must_ understand that!" Wales slammed a fist down on the armrest of his chair. "So why? It _must_ be because of that benefactor! They must be after something! And I'll be damned before I let someone play games with _my_ country and people!"

Wales's chest heaved up and down. Perhaps it was his exhaustion that was fraying his normally cool demeanor, but he felt abnormally irate at being unable to understand this mystery.

"Your Highness," Smith said calmly, after a moment. "I believe I have once taught you before that obsessing over a matter you know cannot be answered with the currently available information is a fool's course of action. In the end, all it will do is to mentally drive yourself into a corner and help the enemy."

"The enemy," Wales snorted contemptibly. "My people."

"They ceased to be your people when they betrayed the royal family, Your Highness," Smith said quietly.

"Maybe so, but I disagree." Wales sighed exasperatedly. "I'm tired, Smith. Leave me. I wish to sleep for a while."

"Of course, Your Highness." Smith bowed low and left the room, leaving Wales alone to his thoughts once more.

* * *

><p>Sheffield stifled a sigh as she watched the war council in session. Pathetic, the lot of them. To think, just because they were being pushed back by the Royalists, they were already starting to waver. Cowards. How dare they doubt the plans of her master? In order for him to retrieve the Founder's Music Box whilst avoiding links back to him, and for his own entertainment, it was imperative that Reconquista give all that they have, including their own lives, in trying to conquer Albion. Truly, if they were not still necessary, she would have killed them all right then and there.<p>

"Lord Cromwell," one of Reconquista's generals finally said in a solemn manner. "As it stands, all of our forces will eventually be pushed back to Rosais, whereupon we will be forced to surrender, unless we can somehow change the tide of the war soon. What is it that you would like us to do?"

The rest of the table looked to their leader hopefully, like a child would to his mother or father when looking for guidance. Cromwell smiled at them benevolently.

"Be not afraid," Cromwell said in a calm, soothing voice. "Founder Brimir has spoken to me. He has seen our plight, and he promises us victory, for we are righteous and powerful. We are the ones who shall unite all of Halkeginia, and then take back the Holy Lands from the elves. It is our destiny."

"But Lord Cromwell," the same general said insistently. "Unless a miracle happens, we are certain to lose this war."

"Do you doubt, General?" Cromwell said in a patient, grandfatherly way. "Then I suppose I will have to dispel those doubts for the sake of our destiny. Sheffield, please prepare _that_."

"Of course, my lord," Sheffield said, perfectly playing her role as Cromwell's secretary. She left the room for a brief moment and said to the two men who were waiting patiently in the hall with a large, man-sized bag between them, "Bring it in."

With wordless obedience, the two men brought it in and carefully laid it at Cromwell's side. Then Sheffield bent down and opened it, revealing the corpse of a young man.

"Look well, comrades," Cromwell said, gesturing to the cadaver. "Here lies a believer, fallen in glorious battle for our righteous cause." The generals all leaned in closely to look at the corpse. So focused were they on it that they did not notice Cromwell surreptitiously taking out a ring from his pocket and slipping it on his finger. "And now, through the power that Founder Brimir has granted me, I shall return this man's life unto him. Watch closely at the power of the Void."

The ring suddenly shined with a vibrant light, and it flowed downward like cascading water, and seeped into the corpse. The dead body glowed momentarily with light, and then it shook and slowly sat up in a manner similar to that of a man who was simply waking from a night's rest. At the display, the generals all went wide-eyed and were completely silent, having been rendered speechless by what they were witnessing.

Once the formerly dead body arose, Cromwell looked at him evenly. "Who are you?" Cromwell said.

"Leonard Simpson," the revived man said."A true follower of Brimir. A soldier of Reconquista."

"Who am I?"

"You are Lord Cromwell, leader of Reconquista, and the man chosen by Brimir to lead us."

"Excellent," Cromwell said. He turned back to the generals. "Do you see now? Or are there still any doubts left amongst you?"

"No. No doubts at all, my lord," the first general said apologetically. "Forgive me for my words. With the power of the legendary Void on our side, we are certain to win."

"There is nothing to forgive, General," Cromwell said kindly. "To doubt is only human." Cromwell's face hardened. "However, the time for doubt has passed. We must steel ourselves if we wish to win this war. Now go and prepare the troops. Tell them of what you have seen here today. Tell them that God and Founder Brimir are with us, and that in the days to come, we shall drive back the Royalists and emerge victorious."

"Yes, Lord Cromwell!" the generals all cried out in chorus, before saluting and departing the room.

Once they were gone, Cromwell exhaled deeply. And then he immediately began trembling violently and collapsed to the ground on all fours.

"L-Lady Sheffield. W-what do I do?" Cromwell whined. "D-did you hear? W-we're going to l-lose. Founder Brimir, we're going to lose! And I'm going to die!"

Sheffield sighed exasperatedly. Cromwell, being a former priest, was excellent at acting calm and wise in front of others. However, his true nature was that of a complete and utter coward; a spineless worm of the highest degree. While those traits did make him exceptionally easy to manipulate, it was at the same time extremely aggravating to put up with.

"You did excellently, Cromwell," Sheffield said in the most soothing manner that she could. "There is no need to fear. My master has promised you victory – to make you king, and king you shall be, just as you said you wanted to be."

"A king? A king? Hahaha," Cromwell sank even lower to the ground, cradling his head in his hands. "I had meant that as a joke. I never thought that you and your master would actually try and make me king of Albion. I'm scared, Sheffield. I'm scared, so scared. I don't want to die. I don't want to do this anymore."

Anger flashed through Sheffield like an exploding volcano. Brutally, she kicked Cromwell in the face, sending him tumbling sideways as he yelped in pain. Without pause, she began repeatedly lashing out all over his body with her foot, uncaring of the yelps of pain and pleas for mercy.

"You don't want to do this anymore?" Sheffield hissed as she unkindly brought a foot down on Cromwell's head, pinning him face down to the ground. She ground her foot on his head, eliciting another cry of pain from him. "You don't _want_ to do this anymore? You ungrateful little worm! Do you know how much time and resources my master has put into making your dream come true? Do you understand how incredibly difficult it was to procure the Ring of Andvari so that you could perform that little trick just now? And you want to throw all of that away just because the battle is a little unfavorable for you? Just because you're a coward?"

"P-please forgive me!" Cromwell whimpered painfully, as Sheffield continued to grind her foot on top of his head, rubbing his face with bone crushing force into the marble floor.

"My master is granting you the opportunity to grab hold of something that your lowly self could never have hoped to dream of on your own, not even if you burned your entire life trying to achieve it!" Sheffield said. "And you want to throw. That. Away." Sheffield sneered. "Hmph. Perhaps I ought to just be rid of you here and now and have someone else take your place? It would be so easy, after all, to just crush you like an ant."

To emphasize her point, Sheffield took her foot off of Cromwell and stomped it down on the ground mere centimeters away from his head. A loud, heavy sound followed the action, echoing throughout the council room.

"No! No! Please don't abandon me!" Cromwell begged pitifully, as he crawled and squirmed over to Sheffield's feet and immediately began kissing them. "Please, Lady Sheffield! I'll do anything!"

Sheffield looked down coldly at the pathetic man, no, the pathetic _worm _currently licking her boots. "Good, for that is what we are demanding from you. Now, give me the ring."

"W-What?" the worm stuttered.

"I said, give me the ring," Sheffield said impatiently. "Or must I turn this into an object lesson?"

"No, no. Of course not," the worm said hastily as he quickly took off the ring and presented it with both hands to Sheffield while kneeling, and with his head bowed, as if he were handing something sacred over to God himself. "But if I may ask, Lady Sheffield, what are you planning on doing with it?"

"To bring you victory, of course," Sheffield said, as she plucked the ring from the worm's grubby little hands. "Since you and your people have proven to be so incompetent, it is necessary for me to take a more active role than I have been playing up until now."

"I don't understand," the worm said. "How will that ring help you to do that?"

"Of course you don't understand," Sheffield scoffed. "What do you know about this Ring of Andvari?"

"Um... That it was taken from the Water Spirit of Ragdorian Lake," the worm said. "And that it possesses the power to revive the dead."

"That is only scratching the surface of its true powers," Sheffield said. "This ring holds the ancient power of water, and water's domain is that of life itself. All living beings depend on water, and through that connection, water holds power over both mind and body." Upon seeing the still-confused expression on the worm's face, Sheffield sighed exasperatedly. "Do not concern yourself with it, you fool. Just be prepared to move the troops when I order you to."

"Yes, Lady Sheffield," the worm replied obediently.

Sheffield slipped the Ring of Andvari on her her left middle finger. On her hands, a multitude of other jewelery of all manners of shapes and color were already being worn. Like the Ring of Andvari, they were all magical tools. Sheffield took one such ring off of her hands. It was one set with a gem of swirling azure. Two others that were identical to it still adorned her graceful fingers.

"Hold onto this," Sheffield commanded the worm, as she handed him that ring. "It will allow me to communicate with you from anywhere, at any time. Do not lose it, or else your life will be forfeit."

The worm gulped and nodded. "I understand."

With one last contemptuous sneer at the worm, Sheffield left the room to make preparations for her infiltration of Saxe-Gotha.

* * *

><p>Saito looked outside the window from his chair in the room Tiffania had given him in her own house. He looked at the clear, starry sky and the dark, quiet forest. This place was so different from the Red Zone. It was so peaceful. Even the silence between the two places had a different quality. Here, it was not a complete silence. It was a quietness in which the soft sounds of nocturnal bugs and animals pervaded throughout the stillness, showing that this place teemed with life – genuine life, and not viral monsters. In the Red Zone, the quiet there was the silence of the grave. Lifeless. Barren. Desolate. The only noises that came from that place had been when Blackwatch had come searching for him, and the ensuing fight afterward. Before he had killed them all, there had also been the low, guttural sounds of the infected.<p>

Saito felt grateful that Tiffania had messed up and summoned him. Even if he had been pulled into an entirely different world, he didn't care. Any place was better than the Red Zone and the situation he had been in.

A soft knocking sound on the door caused Saito to glance in its direction. Saito stood up and walked over to the door and opened it. Standing there was Matilda.

"May I come in?" Matilda asked.

"Yes," Saito said, as he went back to his chair beside the window and sat down again.

Matilda entered the room and gently closed the door behind her. It was dark, and it was only thanks to the soft moonlight that the two occupants were able to maintain visual contact of each other.

"So?" Saito said. "What is it that you want to talk about?"

"I'm going to be blunt and just tell you right out that I don't like you," Matilda said coldly.

Saito blinked. Even though she was expressing her dislike for him, he found it strangely... _refreshing_ to hear it expressed so straightforwardly, especially since it was being stated _without_ being accompanied by an attempt on his life.

"What I wanted was for Tiffania to summon a strong familiar that would be capable of protecting her from any possible danger," Matilda continued. "Unfortunately, she got you. Worse still, you two haven't even finished performing the contract. But since she can no longer summon another familiar, I am forced to rely on you to keep my little sister safe. I will ask that you do just that, because she means the world to me."

Saito arched an eyebrow. "You would entrust a stranger with the safety of someone so important to you?"

"I don't like you, but I don't think you're the kind of person who would hurt Tiffania," Matilda said. "And I am a rather good judge of character."

_Perhaps not as much as you think you are,_ Saito thought to himself. "I see. So if I say I will, you will trust me?"

"Hmph," Matilda snorted. "Of course not. But since I must leave tomorrow, I don't have much of a choice."

"I understand," Saito said. "I'll keep her safe."

"Just remember," Matilda said warningly. "If you _do_ hurt her while I'm gone, I will find you, and I will make you pay."

Saito smiled very slightly, showing neither amusement or joy from it. It was an emotionless, little smile devoid of meaning. "Got it."

"Good. I'll be going back to sleep now. Good night." Matilda turned on her heel to leave the room, but paused momentarily at the door to glance at Saito's bed. Its sheets were unruffled, and laid out cleanly – an indication of the fact that it had not been used at all. "You should hurry up and go to sleep too."

"Mmm," Saito replied.

Matilda gave Saito one last look, before leaving the room and closing the door behind herself. Once she was gone, Saito looked down at his right hand. His entire arm contorted and twisted and changed, transforming into a twisted coil of black tendrils shaped into a grotesque and monstrous thing only vaguely in the shape of the human arm. From beneath their twisted mass, red bioluminescent light pulsated softly, while along its outer edge short, bladelike spikes protruded out and were angled upwards. And at the end, where his hand should have been, four long, lethally sharp claws had formed; three of the claws formed the "fingers," and the fourth served as the "thumb." These claws were too long, too razor-sharp to appear as if they were anything natural. Rather, it was as if someone had simply taken wickedly curved, deadly sharp daggers and stuck them into Saito's horrific hands. These were not the claws or talons of beasts. These were the claws of a monster used to slaughter men.

Saito smiled bitterly as he looked at his monstrous arm. "If only I could."


	3. Inhuman - Part 2

_Author's Notes:_

_So here's a crossover idea for anyone who wants to use it. It's a Prototype and Sword Art Online crossover. What if the blacklight virus, instead of being a biological virus, was actually a _**computer**_ virus? One that then infected the system that runs the SAO servers, which in turn causes Alex Mercer to manifest inside the game as something of an anomaly which somehow becomes self-aware in order to go beyond its programming. Potentially, the virus could also have been deliberately used in order to stop Kayaba, or because whoever planted it into the system is just a homicidal maniac and wants to kill everyone, or something. I dunno. The motive is up to you to decide._

_Or if you don't want to use Alex Mercer, I suppose you could make it so that the virus infects one or more of the SAO characters. I dunno. Again, up to you to decide._

_As for Alex Mercer's trademark ability (or at least one of them), his consumption power could work by instead of taking the memories of the players (because I don't think stealing memories would work when consuming video game avatars), he instead steals their levels and whatever other stats, and adds it to his own._

_Not sure if that idea has been done already, but if it hasn't, feel free to take it. I don't like SAO enough to write about it._

_If you _do_ happen to use that idea, please send me a private message to let me know once you've posted the first chapter. I'd love to take a look at what you do with that idea._

**Inhuman - Part 2  
><strong>

In the days since his summoning, Saito found himself staring out the window in his room for increasingly long stretches of time as he ruminated on his own thoughts. It had been three days since he had been summoned here, and in just three days, he found himself having more to think about than he had ever had to before.

He was in a world of fantasy. Of myth. He was on a goddamn flying island. He had confirmed that personally, when he had left the house in the middle of his second night in this new world, while the others were sleeping, and ran all the way to the edge of the island. At his speed, he was able to reach the edge of the island and back again before Tiffania and the others woke up.

Saito sighed. Magic. Unbelievable.

This really shouldn't be surprising him as much as it was, Saito thought, for even on Earth, there were plenty of unreal things. The Blacklight virus which gave him his powers and abilities, for example, was often capable of doing things that seemed to stretch and twist several laws of science to their utmost. But even then, Blacklight still had certain scientific limits. For example, all the biomass that Saito consumed was not magically stored away in some convenient pocket dimension. No, it was merely compressed and added onto his current form. Right now, his entire body was that of highly condensed biomass. Thus, even though he appeared like a lean teenager, he actually weighed more than most trucks. As a consequence of his incredibly heavy and dense form, he couldn't even swim anymore, which was disappointing, as he had used to enjoy swimming.

But magic... That could possibly destroy everything that Saito had once thought to be true. If the scientists on Earth knew about this world, about Halkeginia, then it could cause a complete revolution, or at least chaos and anarchy, within the scientific community.

He wanted to know more. There were so many things he wanted to know. He wanted to consume someone and learn the answers to all his questions, because, regrettably, Tiffania had proven to be a teacher of limited knowledge. It seemed she did not know much about how magic worked beyond its very basics.

From what Tiffania had told him, magic in Halkeginia was split up into four elements: Fire, water, earth, and air. Depending on the number of times a mage could combine the elements into a spell, they were classified as either a dot, line, triangle, or square mage. Square class mages were the strongest, being capable of combining one or more elements into a spell four times, which was the hard limit of any single spell. Additionally, mages could not cast magic indefinitely. Instead, they used a power source they called "Willpower." If they ran out of it, it usually took at least a day for it to fully recover, though that could easily vary from a much shorter to a much longer length of time.

That been the extent of what he had managed to learn from Tiffania. Unfortunately, it was not enough for Saito to begin making educated hypotheses and theories about the underlying mechanics of magic. He did not know enough. He needed to learn more, first.

Or perhaps, Saito thought, Tiffania did know more, and was merely keeping it a secret from him, for whatever reason. It was possible, though it did, admittedly, seem highly unlikely, given her personality. Still, unless he consumed her, he would never know for sure.

Saito shook his head vigorously. There it was again. The instinctual urge to consume Tiffania. It was slowly starting to become more and more difficult to hold it back. He would need to start hunting for biomass soon, by tonight preferably, if he wanted to suppress his hunger for flesh. Hm... Perhaps there were some wild deers or bears within this region.

_Speaking of Tiffania..._ Saito thought about the elf girl for a moment. It was remarkable how similar a situation he was in with Alex Mercer. In fact, this was almost precisely the same situation as Alex Mercer had found himself in, just before he decided to kill all of humanity.

A cabin in the midst of nowhere, a woman and her family, and a calm, relaxing atmosphere totally different from the experiences that both Mercer and Saito had gone through. The big difference, Saito noted, was that whereas Alex's anchor, Autumn, had turned out to be a selfish, thieving bitch who tried to kill him with a gun, Tiffania seemed to be a genuinely good person.

She had given up her chance of getting a "familiar" so as to maintain Saito's personal autonomy. Freely, she had offered him a place to sleep and provided him with food. And most of all, she was personally taking care of five orphans – three boys and two girls – as an adoptive family. Though Matilda also helped, her aid came in the form of remittances sent from working abroad. In fact, she had already left to her latest job in some country called "Tristain" two days ago. The one responsible for the actual upbringing of those children was entirely Tiffania.

It was unfortunate, then, Saito thought mildly, that she could never be his anchor to humanity. After all, the second difference between Autumn and Tiffania was that Tiffania wasn't a human. She was an elf. Thus, no matter how good of a person Tiffania might be, she who was of a different species could never keep him from coming to hate humanity, and with the screaming memories of innumerable selfish or sometimes downright evil humans still screaming in his head, it was a distant conclusion he was slowly but surely coming to.

A knocking sound came from the door.

"Come in," Saito called out.

The door opened, and the subject of his thoughts walked in. "Saito," Tiffania said, "would you join the rest of us for lunch?"

"No," Saito responded.

Tiffania frowned. "Are you sure?" she asked. "The kids would love to get to know you better."

Saito wondered how to best explain that that was even more of a reason for him not to go eat with them, since he was, after all, a bloodthirsty, human-eating monster whose first instinct upon seeing children was to note what a delectable, bite-sized snack they were. After a moment, he decided there was no good way to explain that in a positive manner, and he decided to make an excuse instead.

"I'm not hungry," Saito finally settled on.

At that, Tiffania's face turned to one of genuine concern. "Saito," she said slowly. "Are you feeling all right? You're not sick, are you?"

"No, I'm not," Saito said. _Unless you want to count the Blacklight virus that's infecting me,_ he thought to himself.

"Then, are you perhaps mad at me for summoning you?" Tiffania asked anxiously.

"Of course not," Saito said, furrowing his brow in concern. "Why do you ask?"

"You haven't eaten at all since you've arrived here," Tiffania said. She glanced at his bed. "And it looks as if you haven't been sleeping either. So I thought that, if you're not sick, maybe you," Tiffania fidgeted uneasily, "did not want to be around me, because you're upset with me for summoning you away from your home."

_That's because I don't need to eat regular food or sleep anymore,_ Saito thought. _Though, you are partially right. I don't want to be around any of you if I can help it. I'm hungry enough without being tempted further._ Saito suppressed a sigh. _Nighttime needs to hurry up and come, so I can go hunting._

"I'm not mad at you, and you don't need to worry about me," Saito said. "When I need to, I'll eat."

"Well... If you say so," Tiffania said. "I'll set something aside for you, just in case you do decide to eat, then."

Saito smiled at her. "Thank you."

Tiffania returned the smile with a nod, and then left the room, closing the door gently behind her as she did.

Soon, Saito began to hear the sounds of Tiffania and the children talking outside, where a table had been set up so that they could eat outdoors and enjoy the very pleasant weather at the same time. From where he sat, he quietly watched them through the window. And as he watched them, he found himself smiling contentedly. That he would be able to see such a peaceful, pleasant scene again was something he had believed that he would never again witness. The Red Zone had been known for being particularly lifeless, outside of Blackwatch soldiers, Gentek personnel, and viral monsters, after all.

Saito felt his heart become pained with loneliness and longing at that. He missed his parents so very much. He missed going on picnics with his family, similar to what Tiffania was doing now with hers. He missed being able to enjoy the simple closeness of family. He missed being human and doing human things.

With a sigh, Saito forced those homesick thoughts out of his mind. Thinking about them would do him no good. Rather, they would only serve to depress him. Instead, he tried to think of something else.

_I wonder what Blackwatch is up to?_ Saito wondered. They were probably going absolutely insane over where he had disappeared to, and how. They had most likely assumed that he had somehow slipped through their defenses and escaped the Red Zone. Even now, they were probably searching for him frantically. It was almost a disappointment he wasn't still on Earth in order to see them panic.

"Heh heh," Saito chuckled softly, as he imagined a comical scene in his head of Blackwatch searching for him throughout the alleyways of the Red Zone a la Scooby-Doo style.

Saito let his chuckles slowly fade away over the course of a minute. When they finally died away, Saito rested his elbow against the window sill, it creaking softly under the weight of it, and rested his chin on the heel of his palm. These days of peace could not last forever, he realized. Sooner or later, he would either cease to be able to repress his hunger or be found out for what he was. He would have to leave before then, lest he either kill Tiffania and the orphans or show them a nightmare beyond their wildest dreams. But until then, Saito resolved to enjoy these quiet, halcyon days while he still could.

* * *

><p>Wales strode into the throne room of Newcastle, the palace of the capital city of Albion, Londinium. Set on the edge of the cape at the westernmost end of the island, it was a grey and a nearly unassailable fortress, one that far surpassed that of Saxe-Gotha, and indeed, nearly every other major city in Halkeginia. There were only two ways to assault Newcastle. The first was through the use of an air fleet to bombard it. However, with Albion's air fleet being superior to that of every other country's, that was a near impossible course of action. The other way was through a frontal ground assault through a relatively narrow mountain pass that served as the only connection between Londinium and the rest of Albion. Even with an overwhelmingly powerful army, any attack would cost them dozens, if not hundreds, of lives for just a single defender.<p>

Yet, in stark contrast with its stark and austere outer appearance, the inside was magnificent and grand. Or rather, it was flagrantly flamboyant. It was filled with paintings and sculptures and expensive art of all types. Crystal chandeliers hung from the ceilings, while rich red carpets adorned the floors. And here, in the throne room, was the man directly responsible for squandering so much of the taxpayers' money in order to fund such lavish decorations.

"King Albert," Wales said, as he bowed respectfully before the large, rotund man reclining lazily on the throne. "Father, it is well to find you in good health."

"Spare me the pleasantries, boy," the king drawled. "Tell me, how goes the war?"

Wales blinked in surprise at the question. "Father, I did not realize that you cared for such matters."

"Bah. As if I would," the king scoffed. "But my party guests have expressed some concern over the ongoing conflict."

"Ah. I see," Wales said flatly. "Your guests."

"Is that disrespect I detect, boy?" King Albert growled irritably. "Just answer the question, boy."

"Yes, Your Majesty," Wales said in a neutral tone. "As far as the war is concerned, we maintain a superior position and firmly hold the advantage and momentum. However, due to Reconquista's strong resistance, ending the war will be difficult. I reckon that it will take at least half a year before we can begin besieging Rosais. Another month or two after that before we can force a surrender. But rest assured, Reconquista can do nothing but be slowly pushed back. We _will_ win the war."

"Not good enough," the king said. "The party is in a week. I want those rebels defeated before then."

Wales nearly gawked at his father. Inwardly, he sighed exasperatedly, unable to believe the sheer _stupidity _that the king was spouting. Outwardly, he put on an expressionless mask and spoke calmly and politely.

"Your Majesty," Wales said, selecting his words carefully. "I'm afraid that is impossible. Reconquista's defenses are too powerful for us to carelessly assault. While we are currently planning an offensive, it must be done carefully. One wrong move, and it will be we who are on the losing side."

King Albert snorted derisively. "Fool. Reconquista are naught but a gathering of vermin. And what can vermin do but scatter beneath the boot? Take the armies and slaughter them, boy."

"Father," Wales said tensely. "Though they are rebels, they are still people of Albion, not vermin."

"That is where you are wrong, boy," the king said. "They became vermin the moment they dared to rebel against my rule."

_As if your decadence hasn't inflamed the fires of rebellion,_ Wales thought bitterly.

"Even so, attacking them head on without a plan of action would be an unwise move," Wales insisted. "I cannot, in good conscious, order that of my men."

The king sighed, annoyed. "Very well. Do whatever you like. It does not matter to me in the end, so long as it does not hinder my own plans. Now leave. There are some more preparations I must make for next week's party."

"Yes, Your Majesty," Wales said, as he bowed once more and departed the throne room.

Waiting directly outside of the throne room was Smith. When he saw Wales, he saluted briefly, before falling in line beside him as they began walking away.

"The wind dragons have been prepared," Smith said. "We can leave for Saxe-Gotha at any moment."

"Good," Wales said. "We're leaving now. We've kept the generals waiting long enough."

"Yes, Your Highness," Smith said. "And how is His Majesty?"

"Same as always," Wales snorted. "Thinking more about the next party than about his country."

Smith said nothing, but Wales could feel the silent words of disapproval at the king's behavior. Though Wales would not dare voice his solidarity, he agreed. He respected his filial duty towards his father, but Wales had no doubt in his mind whatsoever that his father was the worst and most selfish king in the history of Albion, and that the entire country would be far better off without him on the throne. In fact, it was not a stretch to say that it was because of his rule that the rebellion had ballooned as large as it did. It was because of King Albert that taxes had been raised far too high, leading to bouts of starvation throughout the lower class citizens of Albion, all just to fund his lavish, expensive parties, which he held nearly every week. In order to maintain popularity with the majority of the nobility, he had also relaxed many of the laws that had once restricted the amount of power that the nobles could wield over the commoners. Without those laws, the nobles were now freely doing whatever they wished to do to the lower class. Wales had even heard stories of nobles taking away the daughters of commoners that caught their eye and doing whatever they pleased with them. Many of the stories had been... less than pleasant.

It was due to decisions such as those that the commoners and many good nobles had become disgusted and angered at the king. Reconquista merely took advantage of the preexisting feelings in order to persuade them to their side.

However, whether good or bad, his father was still the king, and thus Wales had no choice but to obey the will of the crown. Wales could only hope that once the rebellion was defeated, the country would survive long enough under his father's rule in order for King Albert pass away, and for the crown to be passed onto him. When that happened, Wales could begin work to fix the damages of his father's rule.

But until then, he had a war to fight.

* * *

><p>Sheffield danced through the streets of Saxe-Gotha, dressed in the flashy clothes of a traveling female bard. The cloak that she wore had a large hood that neatly covered her forehead, where her familiar runes were etched into her flesh. As she moved, she played a jaunty melody on a lute. She herself had absolutely no idea how to play a musical instrument, but this particular one had been crafted several decades ago by a skilled mage who fancied himself a peerless musician. However, he had not been as great as he had imagined himself to be, and shamed by the lack of interest in his music, he enchanted the instrument so that it would sound far more pleasant to the ears of others than it actually was, naturally causing an audience to gather.<p>

In other words, it was a magical tool, and such things were under her domain. For as the Myoznitnirn, the Mind of God, and one of the four Familiars of the Void, she possessed the ability to use any and all magical items, completely.

Following behind her was a large troupe of Alviss – magic dolls that could be considered a subspecies of gargoyles. And as she glided through the streets, they danced along with the tune, and the combined performance was gathering more and more viewers as they made their way to the city square. By the time they had arrived, the audience had swollen to a very large size, indeed.

Wordlessly, Sheffield ordered the Alvisses to begin a play as she provided the accompanying songs for the otherwise silent act. It was a well known play based on the famous tale, _The Hero of Ivaldi;_ a story that wasabout a single swordsman fighting and triumphing over monsters and dragons and mages. Given the premise of the plot, it was an act that went over well with her audience, who were nearly all commoners, and they cheered every time the swordsman Alviss defeated another monster or mage Alviss.

As the Alvisses continued their skit, Sheffield flicked her eyes side to side, scanning the audience members, searching for a suitable target. Intermingled with the rest of the audience were common soldiers and mercenaries. Sheffield frowned. They would suffice in a pinch, but she was hoping for something better. Just as she began to wonder if her ploy had failed, she found one who matched what she was looking for. He was a tall man, dressed more ostentatiously than the others, and was looking at her with an entirely unamused glare. He had a wand holstered at his hip, an indicator of his status as a noble, and, more importantly, an officer within the troops.

Excellent.

While the gazes of the rest of the crowd was focused upon her Alvisses, Sheffield casually but deliberately glanced at the officer. The officer noticed the look, and the two made eye contact for a brief moment. Within that moment, Sheffield winked flirtatiously and smiled coyly, before faking a blush and quickly turning her gaze away abashedly. From the corner of her eye, she saw the officer blink in surprise, and a lecherous smile slowly spread on his cheeks.

When the play had finished, the Alvisses and Sheffield bowed theatrically. The crowd tossed out money to the one they thought was a simple performer, as they began to disperse – save for one: The officer. He remained rooted to the spot, and Sheffield deliberately made a show of sashaying over to him, slowly, allowing seductiveness to ooze from every step that she took, once the crowd had scattered.

"Greetings, my lord," Sheffield said demurely. "What did you think of my performance?"

"Hmph. While I did not enjoy the plot itself, I suppose it was done well enough," the officer said pretentiously.

"Thank you for your kind words, my lord," Sheffield said gratefully, and bowed. "Though, that the subject of the play did not please my lord, I beg for your forgiveness."

"No matter. I will forgive you," the officer said, waving one hand airily in dismissal of her words. "Ah, but your musical skill was astounding. Truly, I have not seen another musician with as much skill and talent as you."

"I thank you for your kind words, my lord," Sheffield said. "Though I am but a humble traveling bard, it was my pleasure being able to perform for one as gallant as you. If there is anything I could do to make it up to you..."

"Oh, there is something," the officer grinned, carnal desire flashing in his eyes as he traced Sheffield's supple figure with his gaze. "Why don't you come with me, and you can perform some more for me. Alone."

"I think I would like that very much," Sheffield smiled coquettishly.

"Of course you would," the officer said. "This way, then."

The officer led Sheffield through the streets, her troupe of Alvisses following daintily behind. As they walked, Sheffield took the chance to look around surreptitiously and observe the city. From what she could see, the place was heavily guarded. There were groups of soldiers patrolling regularly in order to prevent any spies from committing acts of sabotage, and more soldiers stationed as guards at important junctions and certain buildings, which Sheffield assumed were supply depots or other similarly important structures. The officer finally led Sheffield into a small inn located in a quiet place away from the main streets. There, he quickly paid the seedy looking innkeeper with some gold coins before leading Sheffield up into the room he rented.

Once the door had been closed and locked, the officer turned to Sheffield almost impatiently.

"Now then," the officer growled, as he stepped in close to Sheffield and slowly drew her hood back. He leaned in for a kiss, and as he did so, Sheffield affixed a cold stare onto the man. Suddenly, the man stopped. "What the?" the officer blinked in surprise upon seeing Sheffield's fully revealed face. In particular, his gaze was focused on her forehead. "Are those... runes?"

Without responding, Sheffield simply placed a hand on the man's chest – the same hand that had the Ring of Andvari upon it. The ring immediately glowed a vibrant cerulean, and the man's eyes suddenly clouded and glazed over for a moment, before refocusing.

"Pig," Sheffield sneered in disgust. "You hold yourself too high."

Immediately, he dropped to one knee and bowed reverently.

"My lady, how may I serve you?" the officer said listlessly.

Sheffield sat herself down at a chair and smiled at the power of the Ring of Andvari. She had told Cromwell that the ring possessed the ancient power of water, and that water's domain was that of life itself. What he failed to understand was something actually quite simple. Through the power of the ring, Sheffield could seize control of the mind and body of any living being. And it was this ability that would win Reconquista the war.

"Tell me all that you know about the Royalists plans," Sheffield commanded.

"Yes, my lady," the officer said. "Currently, the generals have begun preparations for a campaign that will drive Reconquista back to Rosais and force a surrender."

"And what are the exact details of this plan?"

"My apologies, my lady," the officer said monotonously. "As I am but a low ranked officer, I am unaware of the details. I only know that it will take at least a week before the planning and preparations for the campaign will be finished. After that, the troops will likely begin mobilization."

"Tsk. Useless pig," Sheffield said, clicking her tongue in annoyance.

"My apologies, my lady," the puppet said most fervently.

"Still," Sheffield sighed, "I suppose that much is sufficient for my plans."

"Thank you, my lady."

Sheffield mused over the new piece of information she had just obtained. It wasn't quite as much as she had hoped to gather when she sought out an officer within the Royalist armies, but it was enough to tell her when the deadline for her own scheme was. One week. She had one week to carry out her plan and win Saxe-Gotha for Reconquista.

"Tell me all that you know about this city's water supply," Sheffield ordered.

"Yes, my lady," the officer said. "Most of Saxe-Gotha relies on two major sources of water: The large lake to the south of the city, and the rivers that flow from the mountains to the northwest. However, slightly less than a fourth of the city's wells also draws on a large source of groundwater far beneath the city."

"Oh?" Sheffield said thoughtfully. "Is that so?"

Sheffield considered that bit of information and weighed her options. What she needed to do was use the Ring of Andvari to pollute a source of water with its magic, thereby allowing her to seize control of large portions of the Royalist army and turn them against each other. However, she must not win the battle in that manner, though she most certainly could. Reconquista needed to be the one to win and to conquer the city, both in order to bolster morale and to send a message to all of Halkeginia that they were not mere rebels, but a powerful force that possessed the ability to back their stated goals. All she needed to do, then, was to create chaos and weakness, an opportunity for Reconquista to strike. That being the case, it would be best to use the groundwater instead of the other sources of water. This way, she could take control of just enough Royalist soldiers and citizens without overwhelming them entirely.

"Where is the nearest well that relies on the groundwater?" Sheffield inquired.

"There is one such well in the city square, where I met you, my lady," the puppet answered dutifully. "Shall I take you there now?"

"No," Sheffield answered. "There are other preparations I must see to before then."

"Very well, my lady," the puppet said. "I shall do as you bid me."

"Good," Sheffield said. "You will meet me here again tomorrow at exactly this same time. And when you do, I want you to bring me any news related to the war. You are dismissed."

"Yes, my lady."

* * *

><p>Tiffania faced the wooden door anxiously. Never before had she been so hesitant and anxious to enter a room in her own house. But then again, never before had there been a boy her age <em>and <em>who was unafraid of her beyond that door. Never had there been someone there that could potentially become her very first friend. She would be lying if she said she was only a little nervous and excited. Even though she was simply standing there, she could hear her heart pounding.

A friend.

Yes, to Tiffania, this was a once in a lifetime chance to grab hold of the one thing she had always longed for. Here and now was her single, greatest opportunity to make a friend.

_Maybe I should do this next time,_ Tiffania thought to herself, finding herself too scared to actually knock on the door.

Tiffania quickly shook her head, driving that thought out of her mind. She knew that if she ran away now, she would never find the courage to take this important first step in making a friend. If she ran away now, she would be dooming herself to living a lonely, friendless life. Besides, hadn't she already stepped past this door once before, just today, even? She had already talked to him today, for crying out loud. Granted, she had a much more impersonal purpose at that time, so it was much less nerve wracking, but still...

Shaking off her fears, Tiffania took a deep breath to calm herself down and forcibly repressed her nervousness the best she could. Finally, she steeled herself and knocked on the door.

Mere moments after, Saito's voice called out from beyond the door. "Come in."

Tiffania opened the door and walked into the room, closing the door behind her as she did so. Saito was still sitting in the same chair parked right beside the window that Tiffania had seen him on during the afternoon. In fact, now that Tiffania thought about it, it was as if Saito had barely moved a single inch from the chair ever since he had arrived. How curious.

Tiffania opened her mouth in order to say something, but realized that her mouth was almost completely dry from anxiety, and that she had no idea what to say. How could she? What did she, who had never before had a friend, and barely even had contact with people her own age, know what to say to begin a simple conversation?

While it was true that the two had already talked a few times before this, those had been mostly things like Saito asking Tiffania about magic, or Tiffania asking Saito if he wanted to join her and the orphans for a meal. Those had not been conversations. They had merely been one person asking a question and the other answering. It had been closer to that of an interview or an interrogation than that of a friendly conversation.

Tiffania frantically tried to think of something to say, but her mind continued to come up blank, and she simply stood there silently, frozen to the spot.

"Did you need something?" Saito finally asked when Tiffania allowed the silence to go on a little too long.

_What do I say? What am I supposed to say?_ Tiffania thought desperately. "I, um, wanted to, well... talk... I guess?

"What did you want to talk about?" Saito asked, as he stared evenly at Tiffania.

Tiffania let out a silent breath relief, grateful that Saito seemed willing to converse. Perhaps this wouldn't be as hard as she had imagined it would be? She just needed to find something to talk about. But what?

"Um..." Tiffania tried to find something, anything, to use as a topic. Finally, with her current options being rather limited, she latched onto the first thing that popped into her mind. "What is your favorite food?" Tiffania blurted out.

"Protein," Saito replied promptly.

"Oh," Tiffania frowned, unsure of how to respond to the one-word answer. She decided to try switching topics. "Then, where exactly are you from, Saito?"

"From very far away."

"I... I see." Tiffania sighed. This wasn't working. As inexperienced as she was in the art of conversation, even she knew that this talk wasn't going anywhere. It appeared that Saito was not as willing to converse as she had first suspected, and a conversation could not happen when one side did not wish for it to happen, especially when the other side had no idea how to hold a proper conversation in the first place.

However, there was one more thing Tiffania wanted to ask.

"Saito, how come you called yourself a monster when we first met?"

Saito smiled emotionlessly. "Because that's what I am."

"What do you mean by that?" Tiffania pressed.

However, instead of responding, Saito simply looked at Tiffania with a flat stare, and Tiffania understood that he had no intention of answering any further.

"Well, I'm sorry for taking up your time," Tiffania said regretfully. "I'll leave you be now."

"Mmm," Saito grunted in response as he turned to look out the window once more, signaling the end of the brief, unfruitful talk.

Tiffania quietly slipped out of the room, the door closing behind her with a soft click. She let out a long, drawn breath as she slid down against the wall beside the door. She brought up her knees to her chest and hugged it, as she buried her face within them. This had been an opportunity for her to make a friend, and she hadn't been able to do it. She couldn't even bring herself to blame Saito for it. It was because she was just a half-elf. A failure.

And with that thought, though she did not cry, she felt deeply saddened by it.

* * *

><p>Saito listened as Tiffania left his room. He sighed regretfully. He understood exactly what Tiffania had been trying to do, and she had been trying so hard that it was enough to make him feel more guilty than he had ever felt before for how he had treated her in kind. Her proposal to simply talk was nothing more than a pretext. What she had really meant to say was that she had wanted to become friends with him.<p>

And it was precisely because of that that he had acted as a first-class heel. Still, despite that, he couldn't bring himself to think that what he did was wrong in the slightest.

Tiffania was a kind and beautiful person. She was someone who was pure and innocent. If he were to be metaphorical, he would have to compare her to a heavenly being, like that of an angel. Yet, it was precisely because of that that he could not become friends with her. He _must_ not. He was not like her. He was not kind nor innocent, and neither was he even a "someone." He was a "something." From an entirely objective standpoint, he was a monster whose very existence was an anathema to all life. He was a dark and evil thing, like that of a demon.

And just as angels and demons were not meant to amicable with one another, neither was he meant to be friends with a person, especially to someone as good as Tiffania.

A shiver went down Saito's spine. What if he did end up becoming friends with Tiffania? What then? He could imagine. At some point in time in the future, his instincts and hunger would likely overwhelm him, even if he were to temporarily relieve the hunger every day by consuming wild animals. He simply knew it. What kind of face would she have, then? Would she show a face of anger at his betrayal? Would she only show fear at being consumed? All the different possible faces that Tiffania might show appeared vividly in Saito's mind, and he became afraid of seeing even a single one of those turn into reality.

Sounds of the children's laughter drifted to his ears, and he saw them practically dragging Tiffania out to the yard to play with them.

_Yes, this is how it should be,_ Saito thought. Tiffania, a person, should remain in the company of other people. This was more proper, more natural. And in the end, both of them would be happier this way. Tiffania, because she would not learn of Saito's true nature. Saito, because he could look upon the happy scene he could never again be a part of, and satisfy himself by watching the happiness of others.

It was because of that that Saito could not bring himself to leave this place, though he knew he should have long ago. After all, he had already decided that it was impossible for Tiffania to become his anchor, so there was no reason for him to remain in this place. But watching Tiffania and her adoptive family was the first source of happiness he had found in a long, long time, and he was loathe to simply leave it behind. He would leave, eventually, before his instincts overwhelmed him, but for now – just for now – he wanted to stay a little longer.

Then the sound of a gunshot rent the air.

Tiffania shrieked, the children screamed, and Saito's eyes snapped open, completely alert as he quickly homed in on where the source of the noise had come from. Standing at the edge of the glade was a fairly large band of humans, two dozen in number. They were all dressed similarly, in some type of military uniform, save for one, who was a large man dressed in more regal clothes. He was likely their leader. Standing beside him was the man who had fired the warning shot with his musket.

"You there, elf!" the leader called out imperiously, pointing at Tiffania with a wand. "You are on human lands! Surrender yourself to the will of Brimir!"

Saito stood up and spat out a wordless curse. Why now? Why did these fools have to interrupt the moment _now?_

"I don't understand," Tiffania said fearfully, while shielding the orphans behind her with her own body. "I have done no harm to anyone. So why, sir, are you firing upon us?"

"Silence, elf!" the leader said authoritatively. "Your kind has long since occupied the Holy Lands, which rightfully belongs to we humans! Now you think that you can trespass into Halkeginia as well? Unacceptable!"

Saito rose from his seat and jumped out the open window, landing a few feet in front of Tiffania, causing a fresh bout of surprised cries from Tiffania and the children.

"What the _fuck_ are you guys doing?" Saito snarled. He was more than just angry. He was absolutely furious. That some random group of humans had decided to destroy the happy scene he had been watching had been more than enough to cause Saito to want to rip the transgressors apart limb from bloody limb, whatever their reasons.

"Boy, leave. Now," the leader ordered, surprised but otherwise unperturbed by Saito's dynamic entry. "In the name of His Majesty and Founder Brimir, the elf must die. If you stand in our way, we will be forced to kill you as well as a traitor to mankind."

Saito breathed slowly, deeply, cooling his burning rage into an icy hate. He glared pure murder at the meatbags before him.

"Tiffania," Saito said softly. "Take the children and go inside. Cover your ears, and no matter what, do. Not. Look."

"Saito?" Tiffania said in a trembling voice. "What are you going to do?"

"Boy," the large chunk of biomass said again. "This is your last warning. If you don't wanna die, you had best stay out of our way."

Saito ignored the meatbag. "Go, Tiffania," Saito said solemnly. "Please."

Tiffania hesitated for a moment, but finally nodded. "All right, I understand," Tiffania said. "Come on, everyone. Let's hurry."

"Hey, stop right there!" the meat shouted angrily. "Men! Fire!"

At the same time Saito heard the door to the house close behind him, the group of meatbags fired their primitive guns. Some of the bullets thudded against the thick wood of the house, while the rest peppered Saito, embedding themselves into his flesh. Ignoring the bullets, Saito calmly glanced over his shoulder to make sure that Tiffania and the orphans were safely inside the building, before turning back to his prey.

"You made one mistake about me," Saito said, as the bullets simply fell out of his body, his body having simply pushed them out, as if rejecting them. There was not even a single trace of a wound left behind. "I'm not human."

Both of Saito's arms transformed. His clothes, which were also formed of his biomass, gave way as his flesh twisted and changed into monstrous arms fitted with equally monstrous claws at the end. The red bioluminescent light from beneath the twisted coils of black tendrils that formed the arm pulsated like a hellish heartbeat.

"What in Brimir's name is that!?" one of the pieces of meat shouted in terror.

And that was the last thing that piece of biomass ever said, before Saito pounced for it, easily crossing the distance between the two in a single bound, and slashed it apart into several large, bloody chunks of flesh.

"Fire! Fire! Fire at will!" the leading meatbag screamed hysterically, even as it aimed its wand at Saito. "Stone Spears!"

The earth suddenly rippled in a wave of stone spikes, starting from the mage, but rapidly making its way to Saito. If he remained where he stood, the spell would probably pierce his body and rend apart his flesh. Even as the stone spikes made their way to Saito, the rest of the meatbags had fired their muskets at Saito. However, such primitive weapons were only marginally better than trying to kill Saito with their bare fists, and by slightly increasing the hardness of his epidermis and his clothes, the bullets simply ricocheted off of him harmlessly.

Saito jumped high into the air, dodging the stone spikes, and transforming his right arm again as he did so. When he lashed that arm out, it shot forward like a snake towards the leader meatbag, allowing the tentacle-like arm to be presented in its entirety for all to see. Its entire length gleamed a steel-silver color and was blade-edged. The tentacle alone was enough to sever men and beasts apart in a single sweep, but at its end, at the very tip, was a large, slightly curved and barbed blade – a weapon meant to slash or pierce and pull.

It was the whipfist, a mutation specifically meant to allow Saito to attack from a large distance away.

The barbed blade pierced the magic-using meatbag through its body, before reeling it back to Saito in midair. He caught it with his other hand, which was still transformed into claws, by the meatbag's neck. Saito landed on the ground with a heavy thud, his victim firmly in his grip

"Please," it begged as it coughed up blood and wet itself. "Please, spare me."

Saito did not answer. What reason would one have to speak to his food, after all? Instead, Saito transformed his whipfist back into claws and then drove them into the meatbag's body, up from the guts towards the heart, lungs, and ribcage. The massive internal damage killed the meatbag almost instantly. Before brain damage could set in, Saito quickly consumed the meatbag, absorbing its biomass into his body through his claws and arm. A wave of new memories entered his already vast stores of memories, and Saito set them aside to look through later.

"Brimir's balls! Run!" The rest of the meatbags screamed in horror, as they immediately began to sprint away with all the strength their fragile bodies could muster. They tossed aside their useless weapons as they did so in order to run away just a little bit faster.

The Blacklight being scoffed. As if he would let them leave alive. Their crime for attacking Tiffania and the orphans, for ruining his last bit of happiness, was far too grave for them to be allowed to live.

Saito's arms changed again. This time, they became a thickly coiled bundle of red and black tendrils with a pair of grotesque hands at the end. Each hand had only three sharply pointed fingers. Like with the whipfist, these arms shot out towards the nearest fleeing meatbag. However, whereas the whipfist would _extend_, these tendrils simply _stretched_. Like a mass of unholy worms, the tendrils flew towards the nearest meatbag's body and burrowed into it. In an instant, they tunneled their way all throughout the meatbag, eliciting horrific screams of pain as they did so. A moment after, the tendrils erupted out of the body, tearing it apart. The thin tendrils shot out in every direction like lightning. In doing so, they latched onto the first thing that they touched, whether they be stones, trees, or the rest of the fleeing meatbags. And then after capturing their prey, the tendrils all pulled back what they had stuck onto with terrific speed, sucking them in like a black hole, with its center being the first meatbag Saito had attacked with the tendrils. The cacophony of rocks and trees and flesh smashing into each other was deafening, and it signaled the death of the entire group of meatbags.

And then there was silence.

Saito looked around the glade at the damage he had caused. Although most of the mess was centered around the epicenter of the implosion from just now, the entire glade had large amounts of destruction carved into it. Trees were broken and laid on the ground, chunks of earth had been pulled up, and blood and flesh littered the grass. This would all need to be cleaned up before any of the others saw, Saito thought, and he began moving towards the damage zone to do just that.

"Saito?"

Saito froze. Then he sighed a sigh full of regret. He slowly turned and looked back towards the house. Standing there on the porch, her face stark white and bloodless, was Tiffania. In her hand, hanging limply at her side, was a wand, and Saito realized that she must have come back out in order to help him against the now dead soldiers.

Saito followed the direction of Tiffania's gaze and glanced briefly at his still transformed arms. With but a thought, he then reverted the transformations, changing them back into their human appearance.

_Damn,_ Saito thought. _I guess this is the end._

He had only been here for a scant few days, but it had been peaceful and pleasant during that time. He would remember these days forever. But now that his true nature had been revealed, it was time for him to move on. It was something he had accepted he would need to do eventually anyway so he wasn't too sad about it. His only regret was that the time came much sooner than he had expected. Saito turned and began to walk away.

He was stopped when a soft hand grabbed his.

Saito paused and looked behind him, over his shoulder, at Tiffania, who flinched underneath his gaze and immediately released his hand. When she did so, Saito looked forward again to continue walking away.

"Is... Is this why you said you are a monster?" Tiffania said hesitantly.

Saito paused again. "Yes," he said, without turning around.

Tiffania gulped. "The truth is that I'm not actually an elf. I'm a half-elf," Tiffania said slowly, timidly. "My father was a human and my mother was an elf. I don't know exactly how they met or anything, but they fell in love and gave birth to me."

Saito turned around to face Tiffania fully. She had her eyes cast downward and her hands wrung in front of her nervously.

"I am something that is neither human nor an elf," Tiffania continued. "Humans hate me for being an elf; elves hate me for being a human. I'm a failure."

"What is the point you are trying to make?" Saito asked.

"I... I'm not sure. I suppose there isn't any," Tiffania admitted, and she gave a small, nervous laugh. "It's just... I just thought that since I know something about you now, I wanted you to know something about me as well. And, well... um... please don't leave," Tiffania added meekly.

"Don't leave?" Saito arched an eyebrow. "You would rather have a monster like me stay?"

"You're not a monster!" Tiffania immediately declared. "You protected me and the orphans. You saved us. So you're not a monster. You're a person. So please don't leave."

"I'm not a monster?" Saito snorted derisively. "I just ate a human being and slaughtered the rest by mutating my own body into weapons. How is that _not_ the act of a monster?"

Tiffania opened her mouth, then closed it and said nothing.

"Do you know," Saito continued, "what the first thing I thought was when I saw you and Matilda and the orphans?"

She shook her head.

"It was that I wanted to kill and consume all of you. I _still _want to," Saito said so bluntly, so coldly, that Tiffania flinched backwards by a step. "Do you understand, Tiffania? My very existence is meant only to kill and consume all life, and every day my instincts scream at me to do just that. Reflect on that, and _then_ try to tell me that I'm not a monster."

Tiffania bit her lower lip hesitantly, and said nothing.

When Tiffania continued to remain silent, unable to answer, Saito snorted and turned around and began to walk away again.

"You said that killing us, consuming us, is what you're meant to do," Tiffania suddenly said slowly, almost cautiously, causing Saito to stop for a third time and turn around once more. "Then... why didn't you? Why _haven't_ you?"

"Because I didn't want to," Saito said simply, indifferently. "At first, it was because you and the others did not appear to be my enemy, so I did not consume you. If I can help it, I prefer not having to consume innocent people. But afterward, it was because watching you and the orphans living peacefully made me feel... content. Maybe even happy. To see something like that, something I could never be a part of, made me feel satisfied."

"Then isn't that proof that you're not a monster?" Tiffania pleaded. "Just because you have that instinct and the ability doesn't mean you're a monster. That you willingly _chose_ not to obey that instinct makes you something better. It makes you a person. "

"Choice?" Saito laughed coldly at that word. "If a wolf refused to follow its instincts, to hunt and eat its prey, does that mean it's not a wolf? No. It just means that it's a stupid wolf that will die of starvation. Likewise, just because I chose not to kill you does not mean that I am not a monster. It only means that I am a foolish one. Look at me!" Saito transformed his right arm into a set of claws and held it up for Tiffania to see. She visibly flinched at the display. "This is what I am: A monster. Though I may not have willingly chosen to become one, it is still what I am, and I can no more change that fact than I can command the sun to die out."

"That's not true!" Tiffania argued. "You may be _what_ you are, and that might be unchangeable, but it's by your choice that you become _who_ you are! You _chose_ not to be a monster! That's why... That's why I don't want you to leave! And..." Tiffania hesitated, before nodding resolutely to herself and continued speaking. "Though this might be selfish of me for saying so, I want you to stay and be my friend."

Saito froze, and looked directly into Tiffania's eyes. They were watery, as if she was on the verge of tears. And they were earnest. Sincere. She had meant every word she had said.

"... You want me to be your friend," Saito echoed incredulously. "Still? Even now, after I just finished telling you that I want to eat you alive?"

"Yes," Tiffania nodded.

Saito gaped at her. "Are you stupid?" Saito finally asked out of pure disbelief.

"That's mean!" Tiffania pouted indignantly. "I meant every word that I said!"

Saito continued gawking at the pouting Tiffania, whose anger seemed to only go as far as making her appear cuter, rather than more intimidating.

"Pfft!" Saito finally snorted as he, for the first time since he had been turned into what he was, began laughing a loud, genuine laugh, one full of mirth and joy. He kept on laughing for nearly two minutes straight, letting it come out from his stomach – a deep, rolling sound. When he finally finished, he looked at Tiffania directly, who looked at him bemused by his reaction. "A half-elf, huh? Neither human, nor elf... Or perhaps both elf and human."

"Saito?" Tiffania said confusedly. "What are you saying?"

"Just that perhaps there might be hope for humanity after all," Saito said. Upon seeing Tiffania's utterly bewildered expression, Saito shook his head. "No, don't worry about it. I'm just talking to myself."

"Oh. Then... will you stay?" Tiffania asked hesitantly.

Saito sighed, and slowly smiled. "You are wrong about me not being a monster, but if that is what you want, then, yes, I will stay."

_I will stay,_ Saito thought, _my anchor to humanity._


	4. Inhuman - Part 3

_Author's Notes:_

_Sorry this took so long to post. I've been spending most of my free time getting back into some old games I used to play (Recettear, y u so fun?). Also, working two part time jobs killed a lot more of my free time than I had originally thought it would. On the bright side, money! On the down side, not very much._

_Sadface :(_

_Anyway, in regards to this chapter, there isn't a whole much going on. It's mostly some more character development between Saito and Tiffania, as well as showing what Wales and Sheffield are up to and preparing for. Besides that, I'm expecting this arc to be finished in about two more chapters, maybe three, so the action will begin to pick up again on the next chapter._

_Enjoy!_

**Inhuman – Part 3**

The memories of the mage Saito had consumed the day before had been a great boon for him, as he now had access to a plethora of knowledge that was of great use in better understanding more about this strange world he found himself in. This "Halkeginia."

Judging from the level of technology – muskets and cannons being the most advanced pieces of technology that these primitives had – and the societal structure and norms, Saito judged that Halkeginia lived in a cultural time frame that was roughly equivalent with Europe's Early Modern period – i.e. the 17th century. In other words, this was a land of kings and queens, nobles and peasants; where the royalty and nobility ruled over the commoners completely. There were, however, two critical differences when compared to Earth. The first and foremost, and also most obviously, would be the existence of magic. With the knowledge of the mage he had consumed from the day before, Saito had been able to fill in many of the blanks that Tiffania had been unable to explain before.

As Tiffania had told him, magic was indeed split up into four different elements: fire, water, earth, and air. However, there was also a fifth element: Void. The reason why she had left that out, Saito assumed, was because the Void had long since been lost to history. Its last known user was a person named Brimir, an important religious and historical figure amongst the humans of Halkeginia, akin to that of Jesus Christ's importance in Christianity or Buddha's in Buddhism.

But the most interesting thing about magic was that it seemed to be based on, or at least have basis in, genetics. In other words, the ability to use magic was entirely hereditary. Only the nobility of this land could use magic, whereas commoners could not. In fact, it was this difference that resulted in the class schism between the two groups.

Saito felt a burning curiosity within him to understand exactly what the genetic makeup of the nobles was like that allowed a biological trait to allow for supernatural abilities. Was it a dominant trait? A recessive one? What was fundamentally different between nobles and commoners that made for this difference? Saito found himself sincerely hoping that he would have a chance to consume some more mages soon. Though he was able to study the genetic makeup of the one mage he had consumed and compare it with the genes of baseline Earth humans, Saito needed more samples of the Halkeginian variety to work off of in order to better understand how magic and biology was related, and to then form a theory about it. In particular, he wanted to know exactly why it was that his own attempts at using magic had failed completely.

If the ability to use magic truly was a biological trait, then by consuming the mage and stealing his genes, Saito ought to be able to use magic as well. That was logical. However, contrary to logic, every time Saito had attempted to cast magic some time after consuming the mage, nothing had happened. Well, that wasn't entirely true. He could feel the rudimentary beginnings of a spell form from within him, but it was as if he simply didn't have enough power to actually make it into anything even a fraction of the way worthwhile.

It was strange, and the only explanation Saito had at present was that the mage's genes somehow felt extremely diluted within him. However, that did not make sense either. Saito could tell that he possessed the full set of the mages DNA. That was undeniable. Yet, even so, Saito's own capabilities for magic, which should have at least been equal to the mage he had consumed, was nowhere near that. Saito wondered, while he had no idea why the mage's genes were behaving so oddly within him, perhaps by consuming more mages he would be able to overcome the inexplicable dilution effect through sheer concentration of numbers?

Whatever the case, more study – and samples – were required.

Of course, magic being a noble exclusive thing was strictly limited to humans. Saito now understood exactly why Tiffania had been so surprised that he hadn't been afraid of her. In this world, elves were as far above humans in terms of magical might as a human was above an ant in terms of strength. Not only that, but humans and elves have long since been violently hostile towards one another, as the elves occupied the land humans considered holy. Of course, there was no way of knowing how many of the stories of elves were fact and how many were fiction, but if even half of them were true, Saito found himself hoping he would never have to face one in battle. From the tales, it sounded as if elves were essentially like demigods.

The second major difference was the nature of warfare in Halkeginia. Here, naval warfare was an almost wholly alien concept. On the other hand, whereas Earth did not see aerial combat in war – outside of the usage of things like war balloons and kites – until World War 1, in the 1900s, Halkeginia had been engaging in aerial warfare for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years through the use of domesticated dragons, griffins, and other flying mythical creatures, as well as through their use of flying ships. (It occurred to Saito, then, that using the design of a naval boat for an aircraft seemed entirely inefficient as far as aerodynamics was concerned.) As such, seafaring ships were typically used primarily for fishing and a cheaper, though slower, method of shipping and transporting cargo and people.

Saito paused in his perusing of his newly gained memories. Could those "mythical" creatures really be called mythical if they actually existed? After all, calling a creature mythical implied that it did not truly exist, and since they apparently did exist...

_Then I suppose I'll just call them supernatural creatures instead,_ Saito thought with a self-affirming nod.

With that settled in his mind, Saito continued metaphorically flipping through the pages of his newly gained memories.

In regards to technology, due to the fearsome power of magic, firearms had not been as revolutionizing in Halkeginia as they had been on Earth. Certainly, they were used by every country as prolifically as possible and were considered the best equalizers commoners had in fighting nobles, but the general rule of thumb was that a single average mage could stand against dozens of soldiers with muskets and still have a very good chance of winning. And because of magics dominant role in education and many different fields, both practical and cultural, technological progress was far slower than it had been on Earth as well. In the mindset of nobles, technology was something to laugh at and even repress in order to maintain the supremacy of magic. This was a stark contrast to Earth, where the most innovative technologies were almost always sought after in order to provide an edge over their enemies and competitors.

This was good news for Saito, because that meant that none of these people's primitive weapons would be able to hurt him, except in exceedingly massive numbers. Even with the most powerful mundane weaponry of this world, cannons, Saito was confident in his ability to defend himself against it. After all, if he could stop a tank's shot without so much as flinching, then he could sure as hell stop simple cannonballs.

This meant that he had only one thing to really concern himself with, should he need to fight: Magic. Everything came right back to that. Even though he had consumed a mage already, there was still too little that he knew about actually fighting against mages to be able to accurately make a prediction of his fighting chances against them. In other words, he lacked experience fighting strong mages. The one he had consumed had been nothing more than a line-class mage, and a rather subpar one at that. Frankly speaking, Saito wanted to know how well a magic using army would compare to the technologically advanced Blackwatch.

Against Blackwatch, Saito had initially had much difficulties fighting them, but only at the beginning. Unfortunately for them, Saito evolved too quickly for them to handle as he amassed more and more power. By the end, unless they used overwhelming numbers, Blackwatch was hardly a threat to him at all. That, however, did not mean that Saito could afford to lower his guard around them. If he had been careless even once, it was well within the realm of possibilities for Blackwatch to kill him. Their technology was powerful enough for that.

Then what of magic? What of people who wielded not the powers of man-made weaponry and technology, but of the primal forces of the elements? Honestly speaking, an experienced square class mage could be a force of such destruction that even entire companies of well armed Earth soldiers would have difficulties facing in open combat. The difference was that in the same amount of time it took to groom a mage into a square class level, a small army could be armed and trained.

Perhaps the best way to describe the differences between Blackwatch, and all Earth armies in general, and a Halkeginian army would be that of quantity and versatility verses quality and raw power. Unlike magic, guns and nearly all Earth weapons could be taught very quickly and easily and to nearly anyone. In some cases, even children were able to use them. Not only that, there were so _many_ different types of weapons for so many different kinds of situations. Sniper rifles for long distance assassinations, explosives for damage in a large radius, fighter jets and helicopters for aerial support, submarines for underwater warfare, nuclear weapons for total mass destruction, and so much more. Each weapon was unique and incredibly well suited and specialized for their intended purpose.

Of course, that was not to say that magic wasn't versatile. In fact, just the opposite. Magic _was_ versatile. It was just that the mage's understanding of the world was far too limited to be able to fully take advantage of magic's potential. For example, all a mage knew about lightning was that it could be used to destroy his or her target. A scientist, on the other hand, knew the applications that lightning could be used for, how it could be used, and even what it was made of. This difference in knowledge stemmed from the fact that mages never needed to truly understand the mechanics behind a phenomenon in order to make it happen. A skilled square class wind mage, for example, possessed the potential to shoot projectiles using the properties of the railgun, thereby achieving vast amounts of destruction with a fraction of the cost of Willpower that a regular lightning spell would have taken to match it. It was only because they lacked proper knowledge of science that such a thing was outside of their realm of possibilities.

The number of mages available for any given army was also a problem for the Halkeginians. It took years upon years of solid education for a noble to become adept at magic, and then even more years of experience before they became anything worth mentioning. Hence, no military had an overly large amount of mages in Halkeginia, and an even smaller number of mages that could truly be considered a threat to Saito.

In the end, Saito decided that while mages could be more of a threat than Blackwatch on the individual or small scale level, Blackwatch was far more dangerous of an opponent as a whole. He would still need to be cautious in his fights here in Halkeginia, of course, but there was a certain amount of leeway available to him now if he ever decided to go on a rampage.

But beyond that, there were other matters to worry about. Currently, the country he was in, Albion, was in a state of civil war. The two sides were the Royalists, those loyal to the current ruling family, and the rebelling Reconquista. The man he had consumed was the lieutenant of a platoon of Royalist soldiers who were returning to the city to the southwest, Saxe-Gotha, in compliance with their orders to regroup for a large campaign. However, upon seeing an elf, the mage had decided that it was their sworn duty as followers of Brimir to capture her, and had ordered his men, who were afraid of doing such a thing, to do just that. The mage had been afraid as well, of course, but his greed and lust for fame and glory that would come from capturing an elf, a being widely regarded as an enemy of humanity, along with his own fanaticism, had gotten the better of him and made him far more reckless than he normally would have been. It also seemed that Tiffania's delicate appearance had managed to help assure both the mage and his subordinates that she was a weak elf, for otherwise they would surely have run away as far as possible, orders and beliefs be damned.

Saito frowned at that. This spelled trouble. Not only did that mean that the fighting could potentially spill over here, to Tiffania's orphanage, it also meant that now it would be probable that more Royalist troops would be sent here. After all, a missing group of soldiers was something that could definitely warrant investigation by those in command, especially since they disappeared relatively close to Saxe-Gotha, a Royalist held city. And if soldiers were indeed sent here, or even if they stumbled upon this glade by accident again, then it was already proven that they would be willing to attack first and ask questions later. While Saito was confident in his own ability to survive anything the Halkeginians could throw at him, it was possible that Tiffania could get hurt, if the fighting got fierce enough. Saito grimaced at the thought. Tiffania getting hurt? That was something Saito was never going to allow. He swore it.

A quiet knocking sound interrupted the train of Saito's thoughts. He looked towards the wooden door.

"Come in," Saito called out.

The door opened and the golden haired half-elf walked in. She had an anxious expression on her face, and was nervously twiddling her fingers in front of her. It was the same, Saito realized. Tiffania was looking almost exactly the way she had when she had first attempted to engage in a normal, friend-making conversation with him. Saito smiled at her. She was trying so hard, but it seemed that her shyness was not something that was very easily overcome. Just this once, Saito decided to help her out.

"Hi, Tiffania," Saito said in a friendly tone. "How are you doing?"

"Hello, Saito," Tiffania said, a breath of relief coloring her tone. "I'm doing well."

"That's good," Saito nodded. "What can I do for you?"

"Ah..." Tiffania eyes darted around the room for a moment, until her gaze fell to Saito's pristine and completely unused bed. "Saito, have you not slept at all?"

"No, I haven't," Saito answered. He shrugged. "My body doesn't require sleep anymore."

"Oh," Tiffania flinched, no doubt recalling the gruesome scene from yesterday. "I... I see."

"And so?" Saito prompted, attempting to direct the conversation away from the memories of the battle and of the soldiers gruesome end. "Did you need something?"

Tiffania gulped, and took a deep breath.

"Ah, no... It's just that... Well..." Tiffania stammered, as she wrung her hands anxiously in front of her. "I wanted to try talking. Again."

Saito nodded. "All right," he said in an easy manner. "What do you want to talk about?"

"Um... I'm not sure, actually," Tiffania admitted with a sheepish grin.

Saito chuckled softly and shook his head. "Anyway, why don't you take a seat first?" Saito said, gesturing at the bed. "You don't really get to talk to other people much, do you?"

"No, I don't," Tiffania admitted, as she sat down. "Being what I am" – Tiffania gestured to her elven ears – "it's too risky for me to try and converse with someone for too long. The longer we talk, the greater the chance I am discovered."

"I see," Saito murmured. That was understandable, Saito thought. Being a half-elf, she would be the subject of extreme prejudice, and her very life would be in danger if she was found out. Getting too close to others was simply too risky. As yesterday proved, even just being _seen_ was life threatening. "Then, is there anything you want to know that I might be able to answer?" Saito proffered. "I'll answer whatever I can."

Tiffania smiled happily at Saito's offer. Or perhaps she was just happy that Saito was being much more open than before. Saito wasn't quite sure. Regardless, Tiffania nodded enthusiastically. "Then, if it's all right with you, would you tell me more about yourself?"

"I don't mind," Saito said. "Where would you like me to start?"

"How about your home?" Tiffania said. "Where are you from?"

Saito frowned. "That's fine. But just as a forewarning, you probably won't be able to believe what I am about to tell you."

"You're not going to lie, right?" Tiffania asked.

"I won't be lying," Saito confirmed. "Everything I tell you will be the truth."

"Then I'll believe you, because you are my friend," Tiffania said firmly. Saito blinked.

"Friend..." Saito murmured, as if allowing the word to simply roll on his tongue. It felt... good to be called a friend again. He nodded. "The country I was born in is called Japan, but I immigrated with my parents to another country called the United States of America, which is where you summoned me from. Both countries are located in another world."

"Another world?" Tiffania blinked. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that I am literally from a completely different planet," Saito said. "Possibly even from a different dimension, or galaxy, or even universe. I don't really get the mechanics of it, but somehow your summoning spell is what brought me to Halkeginia."

"That's amazing!" Tiffania's eyes went wide with surprise. Then she frowned. "But it's also strange. Matilda told me that the summoning spell is only supposed to summon beings from Halkeginia."

"Yeah," Saito agreed. The memories of the mage he had consumed was telling him the exact same thing. "But it is how it is."

"How peculiar," Tiffania murmured. "What is your world like?"

"Very different than this one. Very _very _different," Saito chuckled. "For starters, things like magic, elves, goblins, dragons, and other supernatural stuff don't exist."

"No magic? Or elves?" Tiffania's eyes went wide. "None at all?"

"Yeah," Saito confirmed. "Things like that are strictly figments of human's imaginations."

"How do the people in you world survive without magic?" Tiffania said, bemused.

"With science," Saito said. "Even though we don't have magic, no, actually, _because_ we don't have magic, my world is far more advanced than this one. With science, we've done things like develop cures for previously incurable diseases, put people on the moon, and create weapons which could potentially wipe out all life on the planet."

"Um... The first two sound amazing," Tiffania said. "But that last one sounds terrifying."

Saito shrugged. "I never said that science was good. Science, like magic, is just a tool. It's up to the person who wields it whether or not it's used for good, evil, or something in between."

Tiffania nodded. "I can understand that," she said. "Then how about you?"

"What about me?" Saito said.

"How did you... you know..." Tiffania hesitated, as she gestured vaguely towards outside. She seemed to struggle to find the proper words to give form to her thoughts.

Saito glanced briefly in the direction of Tiffania's gesture, and he realized that it was pointing towards the same place where he had slaughtered the Royalist soldiers. Then he understood what Tiffania was trying to ask.

"How did I become a monster?" Saito asked wryly.

"No," Tiffania responded immediately and sternly. "How did you acquire those... _abilities?_"

Saito snorted at the euphemism, but answered anyway. "Science." Saito paused for a beat before continuing. "Well, that's the short answer. The long answer is a lot more complicated."

"Please tell me," Tiffania said.

"Okay. But to get a full understanding, I have to start at the beginning," Saito said. Tiffania nodded, encouraging Saito to continue. "You see, there is a secret – or at least formerly secret – government organization in my country called Blackwatch, and they were the ones who developed a virus called Redlight."

"What's a virus?" Tiffania asked curiously.

"Think of it like a parasite so small that it's impossible to see with your eyes. It enters your body and replicates itself inside of you, making you really sick," Saito said. "The big difference is that viruses are not living things."

That wasn't entirely accurate, but Saito decided to save the more in-depth biology lessons for next time. For now, a bastardized explanation would suffice.

"Oh," Tiffania said once, before nodding in understanding.

"In any case, Redlight was a very lethal virus," Saito said. "It had a nearly one hundred percent mortality rate. If you were infected by it, it was pretty much guaranteed that you would die with no chance of being saved."

"But why would anyone want to develop such a thing?" Tiffania asked, completely bewildered. "What is the point of it?"

"Because Blackwatch wanted to use it as a weapon. But more importantly, it's because they were all a bunch of scumbags," Saito growled angrily. "In order to test the virus's effects, they deliberately released it on an entire town of unsuspecting people. The men, the women, the children – none were spared."

"That's awful!" Tiffania said, aghast.

"It is," Saito agreed. "Like I said before, science can be used for good or evil. In this case, it was for pure, unadulterated evil. In any case, not all of the people in that town were killed by the virus. One person in particular managed to survive: a woman named Elizabeth Greene. Only problem was that she didn't come out exactly unscathed. She became a monster. You see, her body was uniquely suited to bearing the Redlight virus. She took in the virus, and it assimilated with her almost perfectly. As such, her entire body became like a factory that literally produced dozens of new strains of that deadly virus. It was because of her that the rest of the surviving population of the town she was in were transformed into mindless, hideous monsters whose sole purpose was to kill and spread that virus and turn others into things like them. Had she not been captured and quarantined almost immediately, she would have spread her viruses and devastated the country. Perhaps even the entire world."

Tiffania was staring at Saito with wide, horrified eyes, as if she was listening to a horror story, which, Saito realized, was precisely what he was telling. She gulped. "And then what happened?"

"Well, some years later, a group of scientists used the blood of Elizabeth Greene in order to develop a new virus derived from Redlight," Saito said. "They succeeded, and dubbed it Blacklight."

"And the people who made it, were they trying to use it as a weapon as well?" Tiffania asked distastefully. Saito found himself approving of Tiffania's attitude. She seemed to be disgusted with the entire notion of biological warfare. It was an attitude that Saito wished that Blackwatch shared.

"To be fair," Saito said, "the scientists who actually made Blacklight didn't realize they were making a deadly virus. They thought they were trying to make a cure for other awful diseases, and they did become suspicious after they saw how it had only very deadly effects. But then Blackwatch, in order to keep the entire thing a secret, began assassinating the scientists who made Blacklight. But when they tried to kill the leader of that group of scientists, a man named Alex Mercer, he unleashed a small vial of the virus he smuggled out as he tried to escape. Blackwatch did end up killing him, but it was too late at that point. Blacklight was unleashed, and the city was plunged into a hell unlike anything anyone had ever seen before.

"However, when Alex Mercer died, most of the virus he had let loose did something strange. Instead of spreading out and infecting as many people as possible like it should have, it instead converged on his corpse and infected him instead, and him alone. It consumed the corpse. It _became_ him. Alex Mercer the human died that night. In his place, Alex Mercer the monster, the living virus, came into being." Saito let out a long breath. "And, well, to make the rest of a really long story short, he killed Elizabeth Greene who had managed to escape her confinement and saved the city from a nuclear bomb – which is one type of the weapons of mass destruction that I mentioned earlier." Saito smiled dryly. "Redlight and Blacklight would be another."

"So the virus Alex Mercer was a good person, then?" Tiffania asked.

"Eh," Saito grunted. "He wasn't a person. He was a monster. And it's a lot more complicated than that. He did something that saved a lot of people, sure. But on the way, he also killed and consumed a lot of innocent people. At times, it was done in order to keep himself alive. Other times, it was simply done for convenience's sake. He did many evil things in order to accomplish a greater good. Whether that makes him 'good' or not is not for me to say."

"I see," Tiffania frowned, as she considered that moral dilemma.

"In any case, after Alex saved the city, he had become disillusioned with humanity," Saito said. "So he went traveling in order to find a reason to protect the human race. But in the end, he found no such reason, and instead came to the conclusion that humans were not worth saving. So he unleashed Blacklight again, in the same city as the first outbreak. My family and friends died in that outbreak, as did many others. Those that didn't, became infected monsters. As far as I know, I was the only one who managed to survive and remain human. And I continued surviving in the heart of that hellhole. For almost a month, I scavenged for food and clean water. I killed infected beings when I had to, and ran away otherwise... and I survived.

"But then Alex found me. That bastard was impressed that I had managed to survive as long as I did, so he infected me with Blacklight. He called it a 'gift.'" Saito let out a harsh, bitter bark of laughter. "Gift? More like a curse. He took everything from me. My family. My friends. My dream. Everything. Infecting me with Blacklight was like the ultimate salt in the wounds. Well, luckily, my body just happened to be more resilient than most people's, so instead of becoming a mindless slave to Alex Mercer, I gained powers similar to his. More than that, I became a being that was similar to him. Like him, I became a living incarnation of the Blacklight virus. And with those powers, I killed and consumed him. _That_ is what I am, Tiffania. I am Blacklight."

Tiffania shivered, though she could not tear her eyes away from Saito in a sort of petrified stare.

"What was your dream, Saito?" she asked very quietly.

At that, Saito looked out the window with a forlorn expression.

"Sorry," Tiffania said hastily. "If you don't want to talk about it, it's all right."

Saito looked back at Tiffania and gave her a sad little smile.

"I used to be a pretty simple guy, you know," Saito said. "I didn't need or want anything too fancy. All I wanted was to find a good, stable job, take care of my parents as they grew elderly, marry the woman I love, and together, raise a happy family. But I can't do any of that anymore. All of that is gone now."

A warm trickle down one cheek made Saito realize that a single tear had fallen from his left eye and was trickling down his cheek. He quickly blinked and rubbed the tear away with the back of his hand. He had thought he had managed to fully accept and come to terms with reality after all this time, but it seemed he still had some regrets left over.

"Saito..." Tiffania whispered hoarsely. Her eyes were watery, and she looked to be on the verge of tears, far more so than Saito.

Tiffania quickly stood up, walked over to Saito, and hugged him, bringing his head to rest on her bosom.

"Tiffania?" Saito said, blinking momentarily in surprise. "What are you doing?"

"When I was younger, I would often cry myself to sleep because of how my parents were killed," Tiffania said quietly. "Whenever I did, Matilda would always do this for me. It always made me feel better." Tiffania paused for a moment, then added quickly in a much more embarrassed tone, "Ah, but if you don't like it, I can stop."

"... No. This is good," Saito said, slowly closing his eyes and allowing Tiffania's warmth and kindness to envelop him like a mother's embrace. "Hey, Tiffania?"

"Yes?"

"Do you mind if I ask what happened to your family?"

"I don't mind," Tiffania said, and though she said that, Saito could still hear the slight twinge of pain in her voice. "My father was once a high ranking government official here in Albion. I think he was the royal tax minister, or something like that. Like I said before, I don't know how, but my mother, an elf, and my father, a human, met and fell in love. But because of the relations between the elves and humans, my mother had to be hidden away within father's private home. She rarely had the opportunity to leave the house. Once I was born, I stayed with her."

"That sounds lonely," Saito murmured, eyes still closed. He could hear the gentle beating of Tiffania's heart from where his head laid.

"Maybe," Tiffania agreed quietly. "But even so, we were happy. Mother taught me all sorts of things, too. She taught me how to read and write, about the culture of elves, and so much more. Father also came to spend time with us as much as he could, nearly every day. We were family, and we were happy. But then, I'm still not sure how, King Albert found out about mine and my mother's existence, and he sent a team of knights to kill us. My father and Matilda's father, who was a close friend of my family, resisted, so they were killed. Mother hid me away and then tried to reason with the knights. They killed her too, even though she refused to fight back."

"How did you survive that?" Saito asked.

"I was lucky," Tiffania said. "I found a strange old music box in the closet I was hidden in, and when I used an old ring I found alongside it to open it, I heard a strange music. It taught me a spell that I had never heard before. Using my father's wand, I cast that spell at the knights. It erased their memory of why they were here, and they went back home. Afterward, Matilda helped me escape, and we settled down here where I've lived ever since."

"I see..." Saito slowly opened his eyes and raised his head away from Tiffania. He stared at her very calmly. "Do you want revenge?

Tiffania blinked. "What?"

"Do you want revenge?" Saito repeated. "If you want me to, I could easily sneak into Newcastle and kill the king and then get back out safely."

"What? No!" Tiffania said, suddenly very alarmed. "Of course not! Why in the world would you say such a thing?"

Saito frowned. "But he killed your family."

"Yes, he did," Tiffania agreed. "And I'll never forgive him for it. But right now, I have a new life. I mourn for my mother and father, but now I have Matilda and the children... and I have you here, too. I do not want to risk any of that just to take revenge."

"Are you sure?"

Tiffania nodded. "Yes. The most important thing right now isn't to take revenge for my family, who are already dead, but to keep my new family safe and happy."

"If you say so..." Saito muttered reluctantly.

Tiffania sighed and smiled, as she placed a comforting hand on the crown of Saito's head. "Saito, thank you for being so concerned for me, but I am serious. I don't want revenge. So please just stay here, with us, and be happy, okay?"

Saito sighed. "All right. I understand."

"Thank you," Tiffania said. She gently grabbed Saito's hands and pulled him to his feet. Or at least, she tried to. Given Saito's unnaturally high weight, he had to stand on his own at Tiffania's urging. "Come on. You can help me prepare lunch for everyone."

"I don't need to eat, though," Saito said.

"Just because you don't _need_ to eat does not mean that you _can't_ eat," Tiffania smiled. "Sit and eat with us. There's no way that staying cooped up in this one room is any fun."

"But I-"

"No 'buts,'" Tiffania said sternly. "This is my house, and I say that I don't want you to just laze about in your room forever. All right?"

"Yes, ma'am," Saito said resignedly, though his lips were openly turned up into an amused smile. "Then if I have to do this, would you mind if I do the cooking?"

"Oh? You can cook?" Tiffania said.

Saito quickly rifled through the memories of the finest chefs in Manhattan that he had dined upon at one point or another. He smiled as he recalled their recipes, skill, and techniques that were now his to use. "Yes, I can."

* * *

><p>When Wales, accompanied by Smith, entered the conference room in which all of the Royalist generals were gathered, the young prince of Albion idly noted what a bare place it was, it possessing only a single long table which had a large map of Albion laid out on it, an appropriate amount of simple, wooden chairs, and a plain carpet underneath. This was not done out of austerity, but rather because of King Albert's decadency. Not even this place was spared from the greed of Wales's father, and nearly all of the finery that had decorated this place had been moved to Newcastle in order to decorate the ballroom. The generals all as one stood up to salute Wales, as he went to take his seat at the head of the table. Smith stood a respectable distance behind him, he being in the council only in his capacity as Wales's personal adviser.<p>

"Gentlemen. Thank you all for your patience. Please take your seats," Wales said briskly, and a round of sliding chairs echoed through the room for a moment before silence once more befell them. "Before we begin, are there any new reports I should be made aware of at this time?"

"None, Your Highness," General Hawkins answered.

Wales looked at the general. He was a man in his early forties, and yet appeared as if he was still in his physical prime. He had a sharp appearance and a strong presence, and was renowned for his bravery, intelligence, and nearly unmatched loyalty to the crown. Like his namesake, he gave off the impression of a majestic hawk, keen and prepared.

"I see," Wales said. "In that case, let us begin this council of war. As you all know, thanks in large part due to Reconquista's unknown benefactor, what should have been an easily crushed rebellion has stretched on for over half a year now. This civil war has ruined many people's lives and fractured the stability of our very country. However, we have finally reached the point where we can begin to see an end to this war. It is my hope that this next campaign will be the decisive blow that we need in order to destroy Reconquista. It is only then that we can begin repairing the damage that this civil war has wrought upon our country."

A round of agreeing nods and grunts came from the gathered generals.

"Your Highness," Hawkins said. "If I may speak?"

"Please," Wales nodded.

Hawkins stood up and bowed in deference to the prince. "Your Highness, as you likely already know, there are three main paths in which we can take for any type of large scale movement of our army. The first is the shortest and straightest path: The main road that leads straight from Saxe-Gotha to Rosais. The second is a route that skirts the dragon mountains to the south. The third is through an old forest trail in the woods northeast of us."

"Yes," Wales said. "I am aware of this."

"In that case," Hawkins said, "if I may be so bold, I would like to recommend that for this upcoming campaign, if at all possible, we ought to take the forest path."

"For what reason?" Wales asked in a neutral tone.

"Because it would be the least dangerous," Hawkins answered. "The main road is blocked by an old garrison fort that has since been occupied and heavily fortified by Reconquista. While it will be possible to take it, it will severely bleed our forces in doing so. As for the mountain paths to the south, it comes far too close to the territory of the wild dragons. It is an unnecessary risk to the men to travel so close to dragon territory, especially since their mating season is so close at hand." A round of quiet agreement came from the rest of the generals at that. Wild dragons were fearsome enough already, but during mating season, when aggression ran high amongst the males, they were particularly dangerous, lashing out at anyone and anything that happened to cross their paths. "Therefore, that leaves only the northern route left."

"I see," Wales said, as he looked carefully at the map. "However, that would take us directly through terrain in which our siege equipment would have difficulty following. More importantly, I'd very much rather not leave a garrison full of soldiers ready to attack us from behind once we besiege Rosais. Such a thing would be disastrous."

"So we attack the fort?" Hawkins asked.

"We capture it," Wales said. "I want the bulk of our forces prepared to assault the garrison. Meanwhile, we will send a large detachment through the forest path in order to circle around and stop supplies and soldiers from coming to reinforce the fort." Wales looked around at the generals. "I want this done bold and fast, but carefully as well. While it is necessary that we take the garrison, it will be meaningless if we capture the fort only to lose too many of our troops to properly besiege Rosais. Are there any questions?"

General Hawkins raised a hand. Wales nodded his consent towards the general.

"Your Highness," Hawkins said respectfully. "Please forgive me for this, but I must ask: Is going on the offensive truly necessary? We are in a strong position, with plenty of supplies and troops. We can hold fast against any assault. And unlike us, Reconquista has little access to fresh supplies due to our blockade around Rosais. Furthermore, the onus of actually attacking in order to win the war is entirely on Reconquista. Thus, if we simply continue to maintain a solid pressure on the enemy forces, we will eventually but surely starve Reconquista into a surrender."

"No," Wales shook his head. "It is both His Majesty's and my desire to end this war as swiftly as possible. The sooner the war ends, the sooner the people can return to their own lives, and we can begin rebuilding."

"As you command, then, Your Highness," Hawkins said, bowing. "We have already begun preparations for a campaign before you arrived here. I estimate that it will take perhaps another week for us to fully gather and consolidate our supplies and troops and move out. Will that be fine, Your Highness?"

"Yes," Wales said. He looked around at the rest of the generals. "Then if there is nothing else to add, the council is now adjourned."

* * *

><p>"... And that is all that I know, my lady."<p>

"Good," Sheffield said. "Return to your post, then."

"As you command."

As her mind-controlled spy left the cramped tavern room they were in, Sheffield allowed herself to relax. The Royalists would be moving out in a week, or so they thought. Unfortunately for them, Sheffield thought with a wicked grin, they would be completely smashed apart in just three days. Her preparations were already complete. She had taken control of a small group of soldiers responsible for maintaining watch on the walls and guarding the gates. However, because the soldiers that stood watch were assigned in rotation, the squad under her command would not be in position to open the gates for another three days. Therefore, all she needed to do now was to wait for her pieces to fall into place.

She could, of course, simply use the Ring of Andvari to take control of more of the guards in order to hasten when she could enact her plan, but she had decided against that course of action for the sake of caution. After all, precisely because the Ring of Andvari allowed her to seize control of the minds of others, it also had a nasty side effect of causing them to be much more vacant and emotionless than normal human beings. If too many soldiers began behaving that way, it was likely that others would begin to notice and then investigate. While Sheffield was confident that it would be impossible to learn of her plans just by capturing those puppets of hers, their will so completely bound to her's that no amount of torture or interrogation would ever cause them to give up any amount of information, their capture could still potentially ruin her plan before it even took off, as it would take time for her to gather and position a fresh group of puppets. For now, it was best for her to minimize her risks, play it safe and simply wait.

All that was left for her to do now was to inform Cromwell.

Sheffield concentrated on one of her rings, the one identical to the one she had given to Cromwell before she had left for Saxe-Gotha, and spoke into it. "Cromwell, respond."

"Eep!" Cromwell's surprised voice cried out from the ring. "Lady Sheffield? Is that you? W-Where are you?"

"Of course it's me, imbecile," Sheffield said irritably. "Were you not paying attention when I told you about that ring? This is the Ring of Four Winds. So long as I have at least one with me, I can speak to the bearers of any of the other three no matter how far away we are."

"Amazing!" Cromwell said in awe. "Such a magical item... I have never heard of it before!"

"Yes, yes," Sheffield said impatiently. "Indulge in your curiosity later. Or better yet, never. There are more important things to discuss."

"Yes, my lady," Cromwell said servilely, his enthusiasm crushed by Sheffield's cold words. "What is it that you would like me to do?"

"Be in position to assault Saxe-Gotha in exactly three days," Sheffield commanded. "I will open the gates for your forces at that time, allowing you easy access into the city."

"But, my lady," Cromwell said. "Even if we can penetrate their defenses, the Royalist troops still outnumber ours."

"Do not worry about that," Sheffield said. "I'll take care of that as well. Just do as I say. Understood?"

"Yes, of course, my lady," Cromwell said quickly. "I will do as you command."

"Good," Sheffield said. Then, her voice turned even harsher and more threatening than before. "Remember, Cromwell, my master and I have done everything we have promised and more. We have given much to you for the sake of your dream. If you fail, your life will not be enough to compensate us. You _will_ succeed, and you _will_ become king of Albion for the sake of my master."

"Y-Yes, my lady," Cromwell said, audibly making a fearful gulping sound. "T-Then I will go give out the orders now."

"Be quick about it," Sheffield said, as she cut off the connection between hers and Cromwell's ring.

Silence reigned in Sheffield's room, and she laid back on her bed and smiled. Soon, everything would be finished. Soon, everything would fall into her master's hands.

* * *

><p>"Oh, wow!" Tiffania said after swallowing a spoonful of the stew Saito was preparing. "This is delicious!"<p>

Saito smiled as he continued to slowly stir at the stew bubbling merrily in a pot over an open fireplace. "Thank you," he said, tipping his head slightly in acknowledgment of the praise.

"Your welcome," Tiffania smiled back. "But how is it that you can cook so well? Were you a professional chef in your world?"

"Well... something like that," Saito said vaguely. "Could you pass me the bowls?"

Tiffania nodded and handed Saito seven bowls. Saito took them, and then handed back one before he began filling up the remaining six. The half-elf girl frowned at that. "Are you not planning on eating?"

"There wouldn't be much of a point," Saito said, as he began ladling stew into the bowls. "Eating food like this isn't really necessary for me. It'd be a waste."

"It doesn't mean that you can't enjoy your own cooking, though," Tiffania said.

"Yeah, that's true, I guess," Saito said. "But if I don't eat, then there will be some extra for anyone else who wants some more."

"I think this stew would taste better if you ate with us," Tiffania frowned.

Saito glanced aside at Tiffania as he poured stew into a third bowl. He shrugged as he set down the bowl.

"It'd be a waste," Saito repeated, turning his focus back on the food. From the corner of his eyes, he noticed Tiffania's ears droop sadly. Seeing that, Saito reached out with his spare hand and patted Tiffania on the head. "That doesn't mean that I won't sit with you guys. I want to get all of your opinions on my stew. I'm pretty confident in its flavor, but this is my first time actually cooking it."

"Really?" Tiffania said, her ears perking up again. "That's a promise, right?"

"Yes, yes," Saito sighed and smiled. "So why don't you go get the kids and I'll bring the food out to the table?"

"All right," Tiffania agreed happily, and she quickly left the kitchen, practically skipping as she did so.

Saito chuckled softly as he watched Tiffania leave. This was nice, he thought. Living here, in this quiet, happy atmosphere, was very pleasant. It was like living with his family all over again. Saito let out a satisfied breath. In spite of his wariness and fears, staying here in Tiffania's home had been the right choice to make. There was a certain peace here he had never enjoyed before, not even before he had been infected by the second outbreak of the Blacklight virus. Even normal urban life in Manhattan and Japan had been somewhat chaotic due to the simple fact that there were so _many_ people there. But here, in these quiet woods, time seemed to still. There was peace and comfort here. For allowing him to stay in spite of everything, Saito was very grateful to Tiffania.

He smiled a little more broadly, as he began placing the bowls of stew on a tray. The least he could do to begin repaying her, Saito thought cheerfully to himself, was to cook for her and her charges an excellent meal.


	5. Inhuman - Part 4

**Inhuman – Part 4**

Jon gasped for breath, greedily sucking in air as he sprinted as fast as his body would allow through the thick and ancient forest. He had long since discarded his weapon and armor in order to allow him to run faster, which meant that as he crashed through the woods, the whipping branches and thorns of the undergrowth left numerous cuts and tears all over his clothes and skin. But that didn't matter. Right now, even if he had to cut off his own arm in order to escape, he would do it. Nothing mattered except for getting out of this forest as fast as humanly possible.

There was something there, behind him. And it was coming for him.

Despite his situation, Jon couldn't help but find his entire situation almost funny. Only half an hour ago, he had not been running for his life. Half an hour ago, his comrades were still alive.

It had all started when his platoon had come across a small village on their way back to Saxe-Gotha and had decided to rest there for a while. The village had long since been abandoned by everyone, save for a young foreign man, a beautiful girl wearing a large hat, and several young children living in a set of three houses. His commander, an arrogant noble, had ordered the family to prepare for them a meal. Though it appeared at first as though that young man was going to refuse violently, the girl had quickly calmed him down, sent the children inside, and hastened to obey. At the time, Jon had thought to himself that that was fortunate. He would have hated to see another commoner be beaten, or even killed, by a noble in front of his wife.

As they ate, however, the others had gotten a little too... excited over the girl's beauty. Many of them had started to openly flirt with her, much to her embarrassment. Of course, if it had been left at just that, then none of this would have happened. But no, that stupid commander simply _had_ to see what she looked like beneath the hat. Despite her own insistence that she would prefer to keep the hat on, he arrogantly demanded her to take it off. When she continued to refuse, he then used his wind magic in order to blow it off her head.

That was when they realized that she was an elf. And in the midst of the ensuing uproar, the commander had ordered them to kill her out of panic. That had been the final mistake the commander had made, for such an order awakened the second monster there. And if the elf was scary, the second one was downright _terrifying,_ far more so than any elf.

The foreign boy leaped into action the moment the commander ordered the elf's death. His arms transformed into hideous, monstrous claws that slaughtered the commander. But there was no corpse for them to bury. (Not that they would have gone back to recover it anyway.) No, the corpse of the commander was instead absorbed into the boy's body. And when Jon saw it, he knew. He realized almost instantly that the boy had _eaten_ the corpse.

And that was when they all ran.

As a professional soldier, Jon had always prided himself on being a brave person, at least as far as commoners went. But there was no one alive that could witness a human being be devoured without feeling afraid. It was a chilling statement that they, the humans, were no longer at the top of the food chain. That _thing_ was a predator, and they its prey. There was no one alive that could have been prepared for that _thing._

He wasn't sure how many of his comrades were still alive and how many had been killed. All he knew was that they had all taken one look at that _thing _eat their commander, and then fled, scattering in every direction. But even now, he could hear the distant screams of one of his comrades from elsewhere in the forest – signs that they were being hunted down and killed. Or perhaps he was simply imagining it due to how traumatically frightening the _thing_ he had seen had been. It was hard to tell at this point, so Jon simply continued running.

And running.

And running.

He needed to get out. He needed to escape. He needed to warn the others still at Saxe-Gotha about the _thing._ Yet, as if the forest itself was playing a cruel trick on him, no matter how much he ran, he still could not reach its end quick enough.

A crashing sound from behind Jon caused him to instinctively glance over his shoulder. He opened his mouth to let loose a wordless scream, and the last thing he saw was a blade growing from the end of a long, gleaming tentacle as it pierced his body and pulled him back into the darkness of the forest.

* * *

><p>Saito sighed satisfactorily on a good day's hunt. He had spent about an hour running the forest, tracking down each and every one of the soldiers with a combination of his sonar sense and thermal vision. It was only because they had all scattered off in random directions that it had taken as long as it had. Still, in the end, he had consumed them all. Doing so had more than sufficiently satiated the hunger for biomass he had been feeling for some time now. And with that task done, he was now returning to his home.<p>

Home.

Saito chuckled inwardly. He had never thought that the day would come when he would call another place home again. It was pleasant. It felt good. And it was thanks to Tiffania that he could feel this way. In gratitude to that kind and shy girl, he swore to himself to protect her forever.

When Saito returned to the orphanage, it was to find that Tiffania was outside sitting on the rocking chair on the porch, waiting for him. The plates and leftovers left from feeding the soldiers had already been cleaned up.

"Welcome back," Tiffania said, as she stood up and walked over to him. "Are you all right?"

"Perfectly fine," Saito said cheerfully.

"That's good," Tiffania said in relief. She glanced to the side, at the forest trees, and sighed ruefully. "I wish it hadn't come to this..."

"What are you talking about?" Saito said. "It was their fault. There's no need to pity them."

Tiffania shook her head and gingerly touched her ears. "It's because I am a half-elf that they died. If I was human, then they wouldn't have tried to attack me. If I was an elf, I would have been able to use the power of the spirits and resolve the conflict without anyone being hurt. And if I was just a little more skilled with my only spell, I could have erased their memories fast enough so that they would leave peacefully."

Saito scratched his head. It wasn't as if he couldn't understand what Tiffania was saying, but he couldn't help but think that she was totally wrong in this case. After all, those men were going to try to kill her. Why in the world should she need to sympathize with them? Certainly, he understood that such a fight was stupid, perhaps even pointless, but that was no reason to pity them. Commiseration, after all, should be saved for those who were actual victims.

More, Saito found himself actively detesting these humans for the way they treated Tiffania. It was not just because of the fact that they had forced Tiffania to serve them her's and the orphans' limited supply of food without care or regard to their circumstances, nor due to how they had harassed Tiffania. Saito simply hated how these humans treated Tiffania purely due to the circumstances of her birth. So what if she was a half-elf? That did not make her less than a human. She was still a person with her own thoughts and feelings, and he could not forgive anyone that treated her as anything less.

"Tiffania," Saito said. "It's not your fault. Besides, I was the one that killed them. You had nothing to do with that."

"It's not about whose fault it is or anything like that," Tiffania sighed regretfully. "It's just very sad that they died. And that you had to kill them," she added with a slight wince.

"I guess," Saito said. A twinge of regret ran through him at having so thoughtlessly partaken of his meals. Even though Tiffania already knew what he was and though she never said it out loud, Saito knew that Tiffania was afraid of seeing him fighting. That was to say, she was afraid not just _for_ him, but also _of_ him.

Saito didn't blame her. Even highly trained Blackwatch soldiers were afraid of him, only attacking him out of trained reactions and blind hatred and, in some cases, mental disorders. However, contrary to how most people would feel in such a case, Saito was actually happy that Tiffania was afraid of him. That meant that Tiffania was neither crazy nor insane when she had offered, no, _insisted_ that he stay despite seeing him for what he was. That she had, despite her own fears, done that, and that she had explicitly told him that she wanted to be friends with him made him happier than he could find the proper words for, because it meant that she was telling the truth.

Secretly, Saito resolved to try to be more discreet with how he dealt with threats to his new life in the future.

"By the way, the children," Saito said. "Did they... see? Me, I mean?"

"No," Tiffania said. "They hid inside the house on the other side the entire time when the soldiers first came."

"That's good," Saito said, letting out a sigh of relief.

"In any case," Tiffania said. "I think it's a good time to start making lunch for us as well."

"Good idea," Saito nodded in agreement. "I have another recipe I wanted to try out."

"That sounds great," Tiffania smiled brightly.

The two went back into Tiffania's house, but only moments after they had closed the door, the children came rushing downstairs.

"Tiffa, are those mean men gone?" one of the orphan girls, Emma, asked.

"Yes, they're gone," Tiffania said. "Saito chased them away."

The children let out impressed "Ooh" and "Ah" sounds.

"Hey, Saito," another of the orphans, Gim, said. "Did ya really beat up those soldiers from before that tried to hurt big sis?"

_Oh, I did more than that,_ Saito thought wryly. "Yes. I did."

"So they won't be coming back anymore, right?" Gim asked enthusiastically.

"No, they won't," Saito answered. "More people like them might, though. There is a war going on, after all."

"Yeah, that's true," Gim frowned.

"But you'll be here to keep us safe, right, big brother?" Emma, asked cheerfully.

Saito glanced briefly at Tiffania, who smiled at him and very slightly inclined her head.

"Yeah," Saito said, looking back at Emma with a smile of his own. "I will."

"Anyway, since they're gone now, can you play with us?" Emma asked eagerly and hopefully.

"Play?" Saito hesitated. "Sorry, but I need to help prepare your lunches with your big sister."

"Don't worry about that, Saito," Tiffania said, waving a hand airily. "I'll take care of it. Go ahead and play with them."

"Are you sure?" Saito said, looking to the half-elf. When she nodded, Saito sighed and smiled. "All right," he said to the kids. "Let's play."

* * *

><p>Wales sat in his chair, quietly basking in the warmth of the fire crackling in the fireplace before him. In his hands was a weathered piece of parchment. The fact that the paper appeared as if it would crumble if handled with anything but the most delicate of touches was a testament to the amount of times Wales had unfolded and refolded this paper in order to read it. In his mind, Wales actually had a very precise count. As of now, it was exactly 354 times.<p>

Despite the fact that Wales had long since memorized every word in the letter and even how each word, each letter, was written, he never grew tired of reading it. To Wales, this piece of parchment was a treasure that surpassed that of all the gold and precious jewels in the world. It was the latest letter he had received from the love of his life: his cousin, Henrietta de Tristain.

Wales let out a long breath as he reclined in his chair. One day, when this war was over, when he could afford to take a break from his duties as prince, he would see Henrietta again. Wales smiled as he thought of the princess of Tristain. Her beauty was unsurpassed, more pleasing to the eye than that of any jewel or flower. Her kindness was renowned. And her strong will, which so many people did not know about, was something that appealed greatly to Wales. All in all, she was the perfect woma-

"Your Highness."

Wales nearly jumped to his feet and whipped out his wand to face the intruder, when he realized he knew the voice. With his heart pounding, Wales settled back down, folding Henrietta's letter and placing it carefully in his breast pocket.

"Smith," Wales said, scowling at his aide standing at attention in front of the door. "I didn't hear you come in. What is it?"

"You seldom do, Your Highness," Smith said, his mouth quirking slightly into an amused smile for a moment before turning back into a straight, serious line. "I have some new reports."

"Let's see them," Wales said as Smith handed him a parchment. Wales quickly read through the paper, and frowned deeply as he did so, his face creasing from the expression. "Two platoons have gone missing?"

"Yes, Your Highness," Smith said solemnly. "There have been no news about what had happened to them, but we judge that they disappeared somewhere in the forests to the northeast of Saxe-Gotha. The first platoon, roughly three or four days ago. The second, likely since yesterday."

"Troubling news," Wales said. While the disappearance of just two platoons in and of itself was not a major loss to the Royalist army at large, nor to their plans, its implications were worrying. "Do you think it's possible that Reconquista is active in that area?"

"None of our scouts have reported such a thing," Smith said. "The forests in that area are mostly undeveloped, save for a few pioneer villages, and even then, most of those have long since been abandoned."

"Hm..." Wales made a steeple of his fingers and pressed it against his mouth. It was imperative to find out what had happened to them. Their disappearance reeked of Reconquista, whether it be through desertion or capture. And if Reconquista was present in that area, they could potentially be laying a trap for them – an especially lethal notion given their current campaign plans. "Go bring me Menvil, Smith."

Smith tensed noticeably. "Your Highness? Menvil? As in, the White Flame?"

"I wasn't aware that there were any others who go by that name," Wales said flatly.

"Your Highness..." Smith paused hesitantly. "If you would allow, might I have permission to speak freely?"

"Always," Wales said.

"Thank you, Your Highness," Smith said. "I must confess, I cannot understand why you would hire that despicable vagrant into our armies. Surely you must know of his reputation?"

"Indeed I do," Wales said in a neutral tone.

"Then why?" Smith asked. "He is a rotten and evil man; a fallen noble. He lusts for battle and carnage and lives only for the sake of his own sick personal pleasures. He has no place in any righteous army."

"I can see why you would think that," Wales said. "But it is also a fact that he is one of the most powerful and skillful battlemages in all of Halkeginia. And since he would get involved in this war whether we hired him or not, I would much rather have him pointing his wand at Reconquista rather than at us."

"... I suppose that is true as well," Smith sighed in a defeated manner. "I will go bring him, Your Highness."

"Thank you, Smith."

Once Smith left the room, Wales sighed and leaned back into his chair.

Menvil the White Flame.

More than his skill in magic, he was renowned for his unmatched cruelty. It was said that entire villages with all its inhabitants had been burned to a crisp at his own discretion, purely because no order expressly forbidding such an act had been given to him. It was well known that his sole purpose for selling himself as a mercenary was not for money, but so that he could go into wars and battles more often and burn even more people alive.

That wasn't to say his magic skill wasn't impressive. His runic name, the "White Flame," came from the fact that his fire spells burned so hot that they appeared white to the naked eye. In all of Halkeginia, it was said that there are no fire mages on par with Menvil in power or skill, and his infamy was only surpassed by the fame of Karin the Heavy Wind, the only mage that was definitively considered to be Menvil's superior.

In many ways, fire was a perfect representation of Menvil himself. Immensely powerful and highly useful as a weapon if directed properly, but also possessed a high potential of burning the one who wielded it. It was no secret that in his mad glee for destruction, he had more than once burned his own allies to death on the battlefield. Whether this was on purpose or accident was something only Menvil himself knew.

When Smith finally returned with Menvil in tow, Wales stood up to greet him. This was done both out of proper etiquette and for practical reasons. Inside the mind of someone as insane as Menvil, who knew exactly what he was thinking? It was entirely possible that he would decide to assassinate Wales right then and there purely because he felt like it. And since that was the case, Wales made sure that he was prepared to react to any aggressive actions with a counter of his own, if at least only mentally.

"Thank you for coming so promptly, Sir Menvil," Wales said politely. "Has Smith filled you in on the details?"

"No problem, Your Highness," Menvil said, his voice thick and oozing with feigned respectfulness. "And no, your little lapdog hasn't told me anything except that you wanted to see me about something."

"Watch your tongue, cur," Smith growled.

"Bite me, Your Excellency," Menvil taunted.

"Enough," Wales interjected impatiently. "We do not have time for this. Let me get right to the point, Menvil. Two of our platoons have gone missing somewhere in the forests to the northeast of Saxe-Gotha. I want you to investigate the cause of this and then report back with your findings."

"Fine," Menvil said. "But... there is a matter of, ah, _payment._"

"You are already being paid as a mercenary," Smith said scathingly.

Menvil shook his head. "I was paid to fight for you in battles, _not_ to go on boring little reconnaissance missions."

"And how much is it that you are asking for?" Wales said in a tone that expressed neither acceptance nor rejection to Menvil's terms.

The insane fire mage shook his head again. "I don't want gold or silver."

"Then what kind of compensation are you seeking?" Wales asked.

"I want a promise," Menvil said.

Wales furrowed his brow. "A promise?"

"Yeah," Menvil nodded. "If I capture whoever is responsible for your platoons' disappearance, then I expect you would execute them after interrogating them, am I right?"

"That is a possibility," Wales allowed. "Equally possible is that we simply keep them as prisoner."

"Heh," Menvil chuckled. "Way to dance around the question. Well, I'll tell you what I want anyway: I want to be the one who executes them, in public, through immolation."

"Barbarism!" Smith declared angrily. "Your Highness, allow me to arrange for a different group to go on this mission instead of this swine."

"Your call," Menvil shrugged. "Though if you end up with another missing platoon, don't come crying to me."

"You-" Smith began to snarl, when Wales suddenly cut him off.

"Smith. Enough," Wales said sternly. He turned to face Menvil. "You realize that there is no way I would allow for that, do you not?"

"Kinda figured, yeah," Menvil shrugged. "You're too much of an innocent little brat to let that happen."

"How dare you insult the prince!" Smith said, as he pulled out his wand. Simultaneous to that, Menvil pulled out a steel rod from beneath his cloak and aimed it at Smith. What ensued was a tense stareoff between the two mages. "Apologize to the prince, you scum," Smith said in a quiet, angry voice.

"Why don't you go ahead and try to make me?" Menvil said, grinning so widely that it spread nearly from ear to ear.

"Enough, both of you," Wales said in a harsh voice. "Lower your wands, or I shall raise mine."

Smith and Menvil both stared at each other for a moment longer, before they slowly lowered their wands precisely in time with the other.

"Good," Wales said. "Now then, Menvil. As I was saying, I will not agree to that condition. In turn, you are free to decide the details of this mission on your own, provided at no point you bring harm to any innocent civilians. If there any Reconquista soldiers there, you are free to do what you like with them."

"Bah. Fine," Menvil grunted, as he turned to leave the room. "I'll be back in a day or two, probably. I'm going to borrow some wind dragons from the stables for me and my boys, too."

"Very well," Wales said. "Make haste."

"Hmph," Menvil snorted, as he left the room and closed the door behind him.

Once he was gone, Smith looked towards Wales with a frown.

"Your Highness," Smith began.

"I know what you want to say," Wales interrupted almost dismissively. "Why am I using Menvil when I have other options available."

"Yes," Smith said tersely.

"I am simply being cautious," Wales said. "Assuming Reconquista is there, Menvil has the greatest likelihood of surviving any encounter. That is good for us. But if he dies, then all of Halkeginia benefits. That is also acceptable. Whatever the case, sending Menvil on this mission is the best choice we have."

"If you say so, Your Highness," Smith said stiffly.

Wales arched an eyebrow. "You have something you wish to say?"

Smith said nothing.

"If you have something you want to say, then say it," Wales said, not as a request, but as an order, a command.

"It's just... I'm not quite certain if you actually believe your own words, Your Highness," Smith said carefully and deliberately.

Wales smiled wryly. "Was it that obvious?"

"To others? Perhaps not," Smith said. "But I have known you for far too long, and I know you are not the type of man who would approve of such actions. Even if Reconquista are rebels, you still consider them to be your people." Smith smiled slightly. "That compassion is both your greatest virtue and your most terrible flaw."

Wales sighed. "You're right," the prince of Albion said wearily. "I don't. How could I possibly be all right with allowing my own people to be burned alive by that madman? It's heinous."

"And yet, you will allow it?"

"Yes," Wales said firmly.

"Why?"

"Because no matter what I think on the matter, what I said is true," Wales said. "In the end, whether or not someone from Reconquista is burned doesn't matter. We, Royalists, can benefit from this no matter what happens."

"Assuming that swine doesn't betray us," Smith muttered darkly.

"Menvil is many things," Wales said, "but he is known to be absolutely loyal to the one who pays him for his services. He will not betray us."

"As you say, Your Highness," Smith bowed. "If you'll excuse me."

"Of course," Wales said. "Farewell, Smith."

* * *

><p>Menvil hummed cheerfully as he walked carefully through an old forest path, thick and overgrown with weeds. Behind him was his band of trusted comrades. Each of them were almost as crazy for the art of immolation as he was, and they had gone through so many battles together that they moved in unison seamlessly, maintaining guard against all possible threats from all possible directions. But walking ahead of Menvil was a group of strangers. These were a group of mercenaries who had approached him some time before at the tavern: Maximilian and his little group of friends. They numbered in at eleven men, which, when combined with his own group, brought their merry little band to twenty-five.<p>

The reason he had brought them on this mission was for a trial run; a test in order to see if they were good enough to join his band.

Or at least, that was the reasoning he gave them.

In truth, they were merely expendables to be used in order to shield him and his own men from the attacks of any enemies they might encounter. If they survived that, then who knows? Perhaps he'll let them in after all.

Still, perhaps they weren't as useless as he had thought them to be. It had been a day since they had left Saxe-Gotha as the painstakingly searched the forests northeast of the city for any signs of the missing platoons. In that time, Maximilian's group had proven to be hard workers, at least, and focused on the work with an unusual amount of zeal and enthusiasm, given how banal this job was.

However, for all the hard work they put into investigating, no clues had been found thus far. And it remained that way until the forest began giving way to a small, unremarkable glade near an old, abandoned pioneer village.

* * *

><p>"Oof!" Saito grunted, as he collapsed backwards, inundated by the children who had collectively tackled him in a playful wrestling match.<p>

Realistically, it was as impossible for the kids to even budge him as it was for a fly to change the course of a tank by pushing against it. He was simply far too strong for them, even if he did look like a regular, if lean, teenager. But for the sake of the game they were playing, Saito simply allowed himself to be tackled to the ground, taking care to not to accidentally land or roll over on one of the kids. If he did, they would surely suffer broken bones or even potentially die just as surely as if a grand piano fell on top of them.

From the corner of his eye, he glanced at Tiffania giggling and smiling as she watched him play with the kids in a completely human-like way. On seeing that, Saito could not help but allow himself to grin himself.

This felt good. Behaving like an ordinary human, that is.

"Take this!" Gim cried out victoriously as he jumped up to body slam Saito on his stomach. "For Tiffa!"

"No you don't!" Saito declared, as he reached up and grabbed Gim while he was in midair. He struggled vainly in order to free himself, but Saito carefully put enough strength into his grip such that it was just barely impossible for the little boy to break free of Saito's grasp.

Saito then got up to his knees, flipped Gim onto his back and tossed him gently to the ground, allowing him to land with a soft thud. Meanwhile, the rest of the kids had taken the opportunity to ambush him from behind while he was distracted, forcing him to lean forward as they dog piled on top of his now prone body.

"All right, all right," Saito said. "You guys win. Good job."

"Hooray!" the children cheered, as they clambered off of Saito.

"Thanks again for playing with the children," Tiffania said, as Saito got back to his feet. "I know they can be too energetic at times, so I really appreciate this."

"Not at all," Saito smiled. "It's fun for me, too."

Tiffania smiled for a moment. Then her ears suddenly began twitching in a manner that reminded Saito of wild deers that had just detected the nearly silent sound of predators, and her expression became one of extreme fear and concern.

"Everyone! Get inside, quickly!" Tiffania cried out warningly.

Hastening to obey, the children fled into Tiffania's house with hardly a sound.

"Tiffania, you should go in too," Saito said quietly.

"Wait," Tiffania said urgently. "You don't need to kill them. I can use my magic to make them forget about us and what they came here to do and make them leave peacefully."

"No," Saito said. "I am not going to put you in danger like that."

"Saito..." Tiffania said cautiously.

"Tiffania, please," Saito said firmly. "I'll try and resolve this peacefully, but if they see your ears, they're going to attack. So please, hide inside and do _not _come out."

Tiffania hesitated for a moment, but then nodded and hurried inside the house, the door making a quiet sound as it was closed behind her. Once Tiffania was safely ensconced inside the house, Saito closed his eyes and let out a breath.

He had lied to Tiffania.

It was true that he had absolutely no intention of putting her in harms way, but that was not the main reason why he had insisted Tiffania hide inside while he dealt with the soldiers alone. In actuality, he was simply hungry for more biomass, and eating other people satiated that hunger, making it easier for him to repress his desire to consume Tiffania and the orphans. Even if Tiffania did not want him to fight, if a meal so conveniently presented itself before Saito, he had a hard time suppressing his instincts.

Saito heard the rustling sounds of leaves and branches being shaken and he opened his eyes to see the ones who had entered the glade. There were eleven of them, and were dressed in a rather shabby manner. However, judging by the wands they had in their hands, it appeared they were also mages. Fallen nobles, then, it seemed.

"Who are you and what do you want?" Saito called out. "I'll tell you now, there is nothing of value here for you to take."

Instead of answering with words, Saito was met by fire and stone. A wave of burning flames and crashing earth.

Well, he had kept his word with Tiffania, Saito thought. He had tried to resolve this peacefully. Now they die.

Almost casually, Saito leaped over the incoming spells, and his hands transformed into large, talon-like claws as he did so.

"The hell is that!?" one of the mages cried out in shock as Saito landed on the ground.

Before anyone could answer, Saito rushed forward, bisecting the nearest mage at the waist, causing a torrent of blood and internal organs to spill out of his body. The death was nearly instantaneous. Despite the loss of their comrade and the fear and confusion of being presented with an unknown enemy, the mages reacted as expertly as that of Blackwatch soldiers, an indication that they were well versed in combat, and they quickly surrounded Saito and let loose a fresh round of spells. This time, they increased the scope of the spell, such that even if he jumped, he would not be able to leap high enough to dodge before being hit by their attack.

Instead, Saito felt the outer layer of his body shift and harden as it transformed drastically. When the spell collided with Saito, his body had already turned into that of one completely encased in a black, chitinous suit of armor – an evolution he had inherited directly from the memories of Alex Mercer. The dark plating of the armor was smooth and seemed to simply drink in the sunlight, giving the impression of a dark blight on a sunny field. The faceplate was similarly smooth, free from that of any contours that would allow one to recognize it as a face by its appearance alone. It was a mask that inspired only pure dread in the wake of its absolute lack of expression, of humanity.

All in all, the armor more resembled that of an insect's exoskeleton or shell than that of a true man-made armor. However, its functionality was ultimately the same, though Saito's was far superior to that of any soldier's armor, in this world or on Earth.

The armor did not make Saito completely invulnerable, so when the spells hit, he felt pain and received damage. However, they were greatly reduced, and Saito easily shrugged off the damage the spells inflicted on him.

Earlier, Saito had thought that these people had reacted as professionally as Blackwatch, but there was one big difference between these mages and those black ops military force: Blackwatch had better information on what he was capable of. Hence why they knew to never surround Saito in a circular formation like these mages had.

Saito's right arm transformed once more, turning into the whipfist. Using a broad, horizontal motion, Saito sent the whipfist sweeping around him, causing the mages to cry out in horror as they attempted to dodge too late, never having once suspected that Saito could have attacked from such a large distance. The bladed tentacle sliced through each mage with untold ease, and they all died as two pieces of meat.

"I didn't sign up for this!"

Turning around, Saito noticed that one mage had very fortunately managed to survive his attack. Probably, it was because he had been positioned behind him, and slightly to the left. Such a position meant that he would have been the last person to be killed by Saito's single attack. That delay must have given him just barely enough time to react and dodge Saito's whipfist.

Saito let his armor fade, regaining his more human appearance. Casually, he began loping after the mage.

The mage ran desperately, crashing through the thick undergrowth of the forest without concern of the thorns and branches that tore away at his flesh. Blindly, he flung spells over his shoulder in a desperate but futile attempt to slow Saito down.

With a grin, Saito weaved through the forest, dodging the spells, and continued pursuing the mage. Despite himself, he couldn't help but feel some predatory joy in the chase. The feeling of the power he held over the man, the almost tangible feeling of his victim's fear, and the sheer thrill of the hunt were undeniably seductive. It was a dark feeling that Saito understood was a monster's instincts, but even if he tried to reject it, it was undeniable that those feelings were still there... and his.

It was only when the mage began to slow down his pace from fatigue that Saito decided to end the hunt. By this point, they were quite deep in the forest, and fairly far away from the glade. However, given that they were only running further into the forest instead of the direction that would lead them out, Saito assumed that the mage had become lost in his fear and desperation.

Saito jumped up and crashed through the branches of the trees, hurtling himself in an arc, and landed directly in front of the mage. The mage let loose a hoarse scream of fear as Saito punched him. The fist landed on the chest, and then simply went _through_ it. The mage could only gawk as he looked down at Saito's arm buried in his chest up to the elbow. He coughed, causing blood to splutter out, and was then consumed. The blood dripping from Saito's arm and forming a small puddle on the ground was the only remnant of the mage who had once been there.

As the memories flooded Saito's mind, his eyes went wide with horror and dread.

"_Well, well, well," Menvil said. "I'll be damned. Is that an elf?"_

_I squinted as I tried to peer through the underbrush of the forest. It took a bit of effort, and a minor farsight spell, until I was able to see that, yes, there was indeed an elf. A cold sweat slowly dripped down my brow. An elf? Here? In Albion? Why? Why in the world was there an elf here in the country the most far removed from that of the elven lands? _

_The terrible stories of the elves I had heard before were instantly recalled by my mind, both from my youth and as a grown man. The tales of their incredible magic, capable of decimating armies five or even ten times their size, was enough by itself to inspire pure fear inside of even the battle-hardened man._

_I shuddered. Again, I wondered: why the hell was an elf here?_

_From beside me, Menvil licked his lips excitedly. Without so much as sparing me a glance, Menvil spoke to me. _

"_All right, this is you and your men's test, Maximilian," Menvil said. "Go and capture that elf. You can kill the others."_

"_You want us to what!?" I hissed incredulously. What the hell was this lunatic thinking? "That's an elf! An elf! We can't fight an elf!"_

"_I can assure you," Menvil said quietly, and in a dangerous tone, "that you and your men have a far greater chance living from fighting that elf than you do disobeying me."_

_To emphasize his point, Menvil pointed his wand at me, while the rest of Menvil's squad did the same to my men._

_A fool. I was a total fool. Why did I think that trying to join Menvil's crew was a good idea? Thinking that I could leech off of his fame to get high paying jobs for me and my men was total idiocy. I should have known that this madman wouldn't give a rat's ass whether we lived or died. I should never have even approached the man._

"_Fine. I understand."_

_Menvil grinned. "Chin up, Max. It's just one elf. I have every confidence that you guys can do this. And think about it this way, if you succeed, not only will I let you guys join me and my crew, but you'll also get a huge reward from the prince when we present her to him. That's exciting, no?"_

"_No." I glared at Menvil. "Not at all."_

"_Oh, really?" Menvil shrugged. "Whatever, then. Just get going."_

Saito cursed himself as he began sprinting back to the glade. How could he have been so stupid? Why had he thought that these eleven men were by themselves? Why hadn't he thought that maybe, just maybe, they could have been bait?

Why had he left Tiffania's side!?

_Tiffania!_ Saito thought desperately, as he crashed through the forest, knocking aside entire trees as though they were nothing more than twigs without slowing. _Please, please be all right!_

When Saito finally returned to the glade, he was met by a sight that confirmed his worst fears. The houses were set ablaze, burning brightly like three enormous bonfires. Scattered around the grass were large chunks of charcoal, which, Saito realized to his horror, were the charred corpses of the orphans.

"Oh fuck," Saito swore, realizing that it was already far too late for the orphan kids. "Tiffania! Tiffania! Are you here?"

"B... Big brother?"

Saito instantly whirled around to face the source of the voice. Not far from him, lying on the ground, was Emma. Her entire body was nearly black like charcoal, but somehow, she had miraculously managed to survive, but only barely. Saito did not need the numerous memories of the doctors he had consumed to tell him that the length of time Emma had left to live could be measured in minutes. Perhaps even seconds.

"Emma!" Saito cried as he quickly went over to her side. "Where's Tiffania?"

"B-big sister," Emma whispered weakly. "T-they took her... B-big brother, where were you?"

"I-" Saito began to say.

"W-weren't y-you going to protect us?" Emma whispered, interrupting him as tears started to roll down her eyes. "W-where were you? Why weren't you here to s-save us?"

Saito felt something inside of him break and shatter. He opened his mouth to answer, then closed it again. Saito shut his eyes, and took a deep breath, though he could feel himself quivering as he did so. Tears threatened to escape Saito's eyes, and he forcibly repressed them. He did not have time for that. Slowly, Saito opened his eyes again, and when he did, his face was set in a resolute mask.

"I'm so sorry, Emma," Saito said quietly. "I failed you all. But now, I need to know what you know."

Solemnly, Saito placed a hand on Emma's chin . He closed his eyes. He did not wish to see what he was about to do. With all his strength, Saito twisted her neck, snapping it in half. Emma died instantly. Then, thin, black tendrils grew out of Saito's arm and burrowed into Emma's corpse, and her biomass was absorbed through those tendrils until her body disappeared a second later.

And then Emma's memories became his.

"_Tiffa," Gim said. "How come we can't watch Saito fight? I wanna see him beat up those mean soldiers!"_

"_No," big sister said sternly. "Children should not be entertained by watching fights."_

"_Are you sure big brother is going to be okay by himself, though?" I asked curiously. _

_Big sister smiled at me. "It will be all right. Your big brother is very, very strong."_

_Though she said that, even a child like me noticed the troubled look on Tiffa's face. I frowned with concern, but said nothing. _

_Just then, I smelled something strange. Around me, the others seemed to take notice as well, and for a moment, we all just sat there sniffing the air._

"_Is that... smoke?" I finally said._

_Walking carefully over to the window, big sister peeked out the window. Her eyes widened, and she quickly turned to us and said, "Fire! Everybody out!"_

_Quickly, we got up and ran for the door. But the moment we were all out, we heard big sister's pained cry from behind us. Turning around, we saw that big sister had fallen to the ground, her body and neck bound by chains that seemed to grow out of the ground. Standing on either side of big sister was a pair of very mean and dirty looking men. They both had a wand in hand and were grinning evilly. _

"_Leave big sis alone!" Gim shouted angrily as he charged the two men with his tiny fists waving._

"_Gim! No!" Big Sis Tiffania cried out in horror. "Run away! All of you, run away!"_

_When Gim tried to punch one of the men in the shins, the man simply kicked him aside, causing Gim to start crying from the pain._

_Suddenly, more chains sprang up from the ground like snakes, and they wrapped themselves around all of us, binding each of us around the body and legs so that we fell, unbalanced and helpless. There was a soft rumbling sound from the forest as almost a dozen men, each as evil looking as the first two, suddenly stepped into view. _

"_Good job, boys," a man with pure white hair, a metal mask covering his right eye, and wielding a metal rod said cheerfully. "It seems even Maximilian did his part properly. I'm glad I sent him and his boys in first to test the waters."_

"_But man, what _was_ that thing?" one of the men said. "Never seen anythin' like it."_

"_Eh, who cares," the first man shrugged. "All I care about is that we got the elf and that we can report back to the prince about whatever that _thing_ was. Besides i- whoa there!"_

_The man suddenly lashed out with his leg and landed it on big sister's side. She cried out in pain and wheezed as she struggled to regain her breath. Mercilessly, the man stomped down on big sister's hand, and even from here, I could hear the bones break. With her hand broken, big sister was forced to release her wand, and the spell that she had secretly been chanting was forcibly stopped._

"_An elf with a wand? Weird," the man commented. _

"_L-leave big sis alone!" Gim cried. "Or else big bro will beat you up!"_

_The man looked at Gim for a moment, and then pointed his rod at him and said, "Incinerate."_

_Something nasty tried to crawl out of my stomach through my mouth, but I couldn't help but watch in horrified fascination as Gim screamed while being burned. It took less than five seconds for Gim to die, and when the fire disappeared, it showed only something charred; too charred to be called a corpse, only charcoal. _

"_Mmm..." The masked man inhaled deeply. "Yeah, the smell of burning children is so delicious."_

"_Boss," one of the other men said with a frown. "Didn't the prince say that we're not allowed to burn any civilians?"_

"_It was an accident," the masked man shrugged._

"_Gim!" Big sister wept helplessly. She looked up at the man who had burned Gim. "You monster! He was just a child!"_

_The masked man glanced briefly at big sister with his too pale eyes. "And I think that a few more accidents are about to happen."_

_The man turned towards us. He waved a rod, and we cried out in fear as we closed our eyes and turned away in preparation for our own death. When nothing came, we all slowly opened our eyes. One of us, Sam, had been released from his bindings. _

"_All right, kiddies," the white-haired man said cheerfully. "We're gonna play a game now. The rules are really simple! You just run and try to avoid my spells, while I in turn try to burn you alive, all right? To be fair, I'll give you each a five second head start. Now, boy" – the masked man grinned – "start running."_

_With tears streaming down his face, Sam began running as fast as he could, screaming helplessly as he did so. But when five seconds passed, the white-haired man pointed his rod at the fleeing boy and said, "Incinerate."_

_Once more, fire bloomed from where Sam was, and he fell to the ground writhing and screaming in pain, but only for a few, scant seconds. Like Gim, he died as a smoking piece of charcoal. _

"_Stop!" big sister screamed. "Stop it!"_

"_Next!" the white-haired man said in a singsong voice. _

_One by one, the man continued freeing and then burning my brothers and sisters, until finally I was the only one left._

"_Well, young missy," the white-haired man said in a friendly tone. He waved his wand at me, causing the ropes to bind me to vanish. "It's your turn. Start running."_

"_Ah, ah, ah," I stuttered fearfully. _

"_Ooooone," the man drawled, drawing out the word slowly. _

"_Emma!" big sister screamed. "Get away from here!"_

_Wordlessly, I screamed as I ran for the forest, hoping that I would be able to hide there and be safe._

"_Two, three, four, five," I heard the white-haired man say from behind me, suddenly speeding up his counting. "Incinerate!"_

"_No!" big sister cried out, and I saw from over my shoulder as she tackled the white-haired man's legs, causing him to sway and divert his aim._

_Fire blossomed from behind me, and I felt the scorching heat burn away at my clothes, my body. The pain was so much that I could hardly even make a sound, and I fell to the ground writhing, rolling in the dirt to try and extinguish the fire. But for some reason, no matter how much I rolled, the fire would not die out. And soon, I lost the strength to even move, and was unable to do anything besides wait for my death. _

"_This bitch!" the white-haired man snarled, kicking big sister hard, again. "Tsk. Whatever. Come on, boys. We're taking her back to Saxe-Gotha before that creature gets back. Let's go."_

Saito opened his eyes, and when he did they were lit with the fire of hatred and rage.

Saxe-Gotha. That was where they had taken Tiffania. From the memories of the mages and soldiers he had consumed, he knew where that city was. It was to the southwest. He also knew that thanks to the wind dragons they had ready for them, it would take the kidnappers no time at all to return to the city. Saito ground his teeth together. Even at his top speed, he wouldn't catch up to the kidnappers before they returned to Saxe-Gotha. His only option was a direct infiltration of the city. He had to hurry, then. He had to go to that city and save Tiffania.

And if she was dead, then he would destroy all of Saxe-Gotha in recompense.


End file.
